PvP On The Island

[Pipinghot]

15 hours ago, Logan96 said:

Ironically enough, it's the moments after getting raided when the desire to continue playing kicks in. Almost like a stubborn will that refuses to be beaten by a simple raid. Once things started going smooth is right about the time I reached the burnout point.

I completely understand that feeling, the desire to not let them beat you down creates some crazy feelings.

When I first started ARK it was on PvP, we were doing great and having fun until a mega-tribe wiped out everyone on our server, including the alpha tribe, which of course included wiping out months of our time. My 8 tribe mates decided right then and there to move to PvE and it took me another two weeks of trying to rebuild and lure them back to PvP before I threw in the towel and joined them.

We did try PvP again at a later time, on one of the small clusters rather than the main cluster, and that was fun for a while. We even became the alpha tribe on that cluster but it still created burnout and I left before we ever got as far as boss fights. I just couldn't enjoy the time struggle between family, work and trying to play ARK as a PvP game.

[Pipinghot]

13 hours ago, Logan96 said:

Call me crazy, wrong, or paranoid if you will, but I personally suspect that you pipingshot play amongst the lunatics that that you mention...and it may be that you have found the best way to play!

Haha no, not this guy. Other than my two-week-long attempt to lure my tribe back to PvP I never tried PvP solo.

13 hours ago, Logan96 said:

1. Microphone:

This is a great tool to coordinate teamwork during raids, dungeons/caves and bosses, but let's be honest. A microphone especially when combined with other tools like discord are a complete emersion buster. Call me a nerdy ass role-player if you want, but when I play a game, whether for the story mode or not, I want to be as emersed as possible. Hearing and talking to my teammates about random poop completely breaks the emersion aspect for me.

Reasonable people can disagree, having tribe mates to talk to while playing makes the game better for me. But I can certainly understand that other people, like yourself, feel differently.

13 hours ago, Logan96 said:

2. Commitment:

This isn't as much of a problem in other types of games, but games like ark are different. Once in a tribe you have forfeited your right to play for the story. You may dispute that if you wish, but I will hold the claim that nobody who plays in a competitive PvP tribe plays for the story. They play for the betterment of the tribe (like Nerva) and that is all.

Sure, I see your point. Playing the story in PvP and playing the story solo (or on a private server which is how I play) are entirely different animals. If you truly want to play the game in a specific sequence than that particular approach doesn't work in PvP.

13 hours ago, Logan96 said:

3. Kill On Sight (KOS):

Call me crazy, but in my experience if you can't communicate wit someone in the game (because your mic is locked in a stupid discord chat room) and you are in seperate tribes then your encounter will most likely be a violent one. KOS was not always the norm in ark, but these last few years the KOS has risen dramatically, and I suspect it's because the people who continue to play are those who already have an established tribe that they only speak to through discord.

I disagree, KoS has always been just as prevalent as it is today (except in the very early months of the game). There have always been people who try to talk first and others who shoot first and ask questions later. But since this isn't something that can be proven one way or the other, it's heavily influenced by personal experience, we can agree to disagree.

13 hours ago, Logan96 said:

1. The survivor documents that we follow throughout the story are faced with their own "PvP encounters." Mei-Yin vs Nerva for example. As such I believe that our own survivor is meant to face the same PvP threats that these figures fought against. Anything else is a betrayal to the storyline.

On this point I strongly disagree. For me the true story of ARK is the story that players experience as they play the game, no matter what mode or sequence they play it in. The explorers' notes are the prologue, the back-story, to help enhance the setting, mood and tone of the game for the players. Mei-Yin's story is not my story or your story or any other player's story, it's the background lore that helps establish the setting of the story that we're actively playing day-by-day.

This is why, for example, my friends and I are playing every map in sequence, not just the lore maps. As far as I'm concerned The Center, Ragnarok and the other free DLC maps are just as much a part of the story of ARK as the lore maps are. The lore notes are nothing more than background exposition to help establish the setting, the story is what each and every one of us experiences as we play.

13 hours ago, Logan96 said:

2. For the reasons I listed above, tribe gameplay is pretty much oblivious to story gameplay.  We can only conclude that our main heroes/villains of the storyline such as Helena and Rockwell went their own ways solo, with the larger "oblivious" tribes serving as allies, or enemies, so I expect that our own survivor is following their path as well.

I would argue that the main heroes/villains are the players, the members of our tribes/alliances vs. the members of tribes that we fight against. If I play a role playing game (using D&D as the classic example) I don't care about what the NPC's have done unless their individual tidbits of lore enhance my enjoyment of playing my own story with my friends. The same is true of ARK. I am the story, you are the story, the maps and the players are the true story, all that lore stuff is prologue that sets the stage for us to play out an experience our stories in the game.

13 hours ago, Logan96 said:

Solo PvP based on a story perspective was always the intended way to play, from a story perspective. Unfortunately, the true gameplay of solo PvP is a completely different experience than what the story portrays and as such it is as I've stated broken.

I would argue that "Solo PvP based on a story perspective was" never "the intended way to play, from a story perspective." And the fact that no one has ever done it is a pretty darn strong argument in favor of my position. ARK SP or PvE is and can be a single-player game from beginning to end, PvP is not, can not, and never has been.

It's important to remember that none of the NPC's that you're talking about have experienced the game from beginning to end in story mode. Not one of those characters played all of the maps and beat all of the bosses in order, their stories all diverge in various ways from that single, simple narrative. The very characters that you are using as the basis for your argument have never done the thing that you're using them to describe.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Pipinghot

[Logan96]

On 2/14/2023 at 9:42 AM, DirkInSA said:

I T O of my own official dip - I have just come out of 36 hours of no electrics - so never mind work getting in the way of game play, my dodgy country does not aid the cause either. I am no even going to bother logging in to see what ruins are left .........

Damn! Well considering that work was bound to get in the way I suppose it's fortunate that it happened now, rather than after a significant time investment right? lol 

To be honest I'm starting to re-evaluate the true power gap in Ark and honestly I don't see any healthy way to stay competitive in officials. I'm not talking about just solo either. At my peak in this game I played in a tribe of 6 and we could average about 8-10 hours a day because we were all part time loser students without jobs or families. 

With 6 people and that many hours you would think that you can pretty much do anything, but still we got wiped out every 1-2 weeks and we were never able to reach the point of bosses or tek.

Granted...I've learned alot in this game since those days, but still it took 4-5 hours daily to hold my own now and I fell to exhaustion. It is just not reasonable to hold those hours consistently when one is also trying to progress in the non virtual world. 

 

[Logan96]

On 2/14/2023 at 3:31 PM, Pipinghot said:

I completely understand that feeling, the desire to not let them beat you down creates some crazy feelings.

When I first started ARK it was on PvP, we were doing great and having fun until a mega-tribe wiped out everyone on our server, including the alpha tribe, which of course included wiping out months of our time. My 8 tribe mates decided right then and there to move to PvE and it took me another two weeks of trying to rebuild and lure them back to PvP before I threw in the towel and joined them.

We did try PvP again at a later time, on one of the small clusters rather than the main cluster, and that was fun for a while. We even became the alpha tribe on that cluster but it still created burnout and I left before we ever got as far as boss fights. I just couldn't enjoy the time struggle between family, work and trying to play ARK as a PvP game.

Thank you so much for sharing your PvP experience. I completely relate and just talked about a similar 6 man experience I had with Dirkin. It annoys me so much to be beaten at something already. It is even more annoying when you know that you can out-play your opponent in every way possible, but you still lose due to sheer numbers and time investment. 

On 2/14/2023 at 3:50 PM, Pipinghot said:

Reasonable people can disagree, having tribe mates to talk to while playing makes the game better for me. But I can certainly understand that other people, like yourself, feel differently.

I can totally get behind your answer in some ways. I think that the secret is finding a group that you can relate to and genuinely enjoy chatting with. I actually did enjoy grabbing my mic in that 6 man tribe.

The issue these days is that my gaming time is mostly in the morning and I much prefer to open the window and listen to the wind/birds while I sip some coffee and get fully emmersed.

I'm just a different type of gamer since when ark first came out and care less about chatting with strangers. Also feeling older every day lol. 

On 2/14/2023 at 3:50 PM, Pipinghot said:

Sure, I see your point. Playing the story in PvP and playing the story solo (or on a private server which is how I play) are entirely different animals. If you truly want to play the game in a specific sequence than that particular approach doesn't work in PvP.

So we agree that PvP played in sequence is something that is not really viable. I think the easy explanation here is power creep. In arks case I think it has less to do with the power creep on tames/gear and more to do with the power creep in terms of ability to progress on each map. 

I think most players tend to focus on tames and cry op. I'm guilty of this as will after my encounters trying to fight off shadowmane raiders. The true problem however is progression speed. With the mining drill and a whip a player can farm a weeks worth of island metal runs withing a few minutes on aberration. 

On 2/14/2023 at 3:50 PM, Pipinghot said:

I disagree, KoS has always been just as prevalent as it is today (except in the very early months of the game). There have always been people who try to talk first and others who shoot first and ask questions later. But since this isn't something that can be proven one way or the other, it's heavily influenced by personal experience, we can agree to disagree.

I respect your willingness to come to a middle ground here, as you are right this is something that is hard to prove. That being said, I cannot accept this answer as a conclusion, because kill on sight IS rising on officials servers and while this may be purely anecdotal evidence, I offer one last example to make my point. 

Wipe day on rust-I don't know how familiar you are with rust, but I'm confident you know what day is. On that day you will find that spawning in will have its fair share of nakeds clubbing eachother to death, but you will also find a massive amount of talking and communication even between groups. 

Day 6 on rust-Completely different experience. The beaches are empty and chat is dead. Anybody left alive before the day 7 wipe has 6 days of gear to lose now. They are not going to risk trying to chat with a random dude who may stab them in the back.

Take that into the Ark formula, where wipes do not happen. General advice on forums for official servers actually recommend that you do not talk in global, because players will hunt you down simply for speaking. There is no more interaction in this game and  nobody is going to risk weeks-years of progression by not killing on sight. 

This is not a problem in rust. And no I do not think Ark should have a wipe mechanic, even for PvP. But the lack of player interaction does need to be addressed. 

On 2/14/2023 at 3:50 PM, Pipinghot said:

On this point I strongly disagree. For me the true story of ARK is the story that players experience as they play the game, no matter what mode or sequence they play it in. The explorers' notes are the prologue, the back-story, to help enhance the setting, mood and tone of the game for the players. Mei-Yin's story is not my story or your story or any other player's story, it's the background lore that helps establish the setting of the story that we're actively playing day-by-day.

This is why, for example, my friends and I are playing every map in sequence, not just the lore maps. As far as I'm concerned The Center, Ragnarok and the other free DLC maps are just as much a part of the story of ARK as the lore maps are. The lore notes are nothing more than background exposition to help establish the setting, the story is what each and every one of us experiences as we play.

I can get behind this viewpoint more than the previous one. I can't argue with you about the intentions of the explorer notes, and honestly your explanation of them makes more sense than mine.

The story is absolutely what each of us experience as we play. For me personally, I'm living in a timeline that is intertwined with Nerva, Mei-Yin, Helena, Rockwell and so forth. Their story for me is also a part of my own story. You may find a different story with your own survivor.

All I can say is that I woke up on a beach with a strange voice (AI?) requesting that I come and find them. To do that in order on official PvP is pretty much impossible, so they should do away with the story mode on PvP all together. 

On 2/14/2023 at 3:50 PM, Pipinghot said:

I would argue that the main heroes/villains are the players, the members of our tribes/alliances vs. the members of tribes that we fight against. If I play a role playing game (using D&D as the classic example) I don't care about what the NPC's have done unless their individual tidbits of lore enhance my enjoyment of playing my own story with my friends. The same is true of ARK. I am the story, you are the story, the maps and the players are the true story, all that lore stuff is prologue that sets the stage for us to play out an experience our stories in the game

I have ignored NPCs that I don't care about in games before, so I understand your viewpoint. Unfortunately, I do care about these NPC's. I have refused to read about any of them because I want to draw my own conclusions based on my own experience. 

I have a hard time viewing the lore as a prologue, because much of it will only be discovered near the end game of each map. To bring this back into the fold of tribe vs solo play...it comes down to how your own story unfolds.

For me the story is a single survivor trying to achieve their one objective of finding the mysterious AI that contacts you on the island. That survivor has to deal with both aggressive and friendly tribes, but not become too side tracked to lose sight, or else they may end up like Rockwell. 

On 2/14/2023 at 3:50 PM, Pipinghot said:

I would argue that "Solo PvP based on a story perspective was" never "the intended way to play, from a story perspective." And the fact that no one has ever done it is a pretty darn strong argument in favor of my position. ARK SP or PvE is and can be a single-player game from beginning to end, PvP is not, can not, and never has been.

It's important to remember that none of the NPC's that you're talking about have experienced the game from beginning to end in story mode. Not one of those characters played all of the maps and beat all of the bosses in order, their stories all diverge in various ways from that single, simple narrative. The very characters that you are using as the basis for your argument have never done the thing that you're using them to describe.

Ark SP or PvE can be a co-op or single player game from beginning to end yes. And yes you are right that none of the mentioned NPC's have completed the entire story line. But these are NPCs...and where they fail, the survivor (you) are supposed to succeed. 

Let's not forget that while our NPC's may have not beaten all the maps they still experienced their own PvP. The issue however is that the documented PvP in the notes speaks of mei-ling riding in on a raptor fighting off squads with guns. 

That poop just straight up does not happen in any ark battle, let along 2v1s with a power gap. The story writers were completely clueless to how battles actually happen in this game, which is why I now claim that not just solo PvP, but PvP in general is broken. PvP is not as intended. 

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This was a heck of a writeup, Mr. Pipingshot and to be honest I've had a few beers so there may be some lack of coherence in there. I appreciate that you put real thought and effort into your post as well. I'd love to keep this conversation going, but if we do I'm down to keep it a little shorter and maybe down to one point at a time, so we don't burn ourselves out on just the forums lol. 

[Pipinghot]

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

Thank you so much for sharing your PvP experience. I completely relate and just talked about a similar 6 man experience I had with Dirkin. It annoys me so much to be beaten at something already. It is even more annoying when you know that you can out-play your opponent in every way possible, but you still lose due to sheer numbers and time investment.

Well, it is a tribe based game, so if you're trying to PvP solo you're taking your life into your own hands. After all, you wouldn't expect to win 1v15 in a first person shooter, you wouldn't expect to solo-win a 10-person battleground in WoW (or equivalent RPG's), you wouldn't expect to solo a 5-person dungeon in WoW (or equivalent RPG's).

The very fact that you can even attempt group content in ARK is an improvement over other games. Single-player is the specific game mode that WC designed to allow people to play the entire game solo, the other game modes were fundamentally conceived as being group/team game modes, so if you choose to solo-play a group mode then it's up to you to accept responsibility for your choice. I'm not criticizing that decision in any way, it's perfectly legit to try any game in hard mode if that's what you want to do, but it's on you when you do so.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

I can totally get behind your answer in some ways. I think that the secret is finding a group that you can relate to and genuinely enjoy chatting with. I actually did enjoy grabbing my mic in that 6 man tribe.

The issue these days is that my gaming time is mostly in the morning and I much prefer to open the window and listen to the wind/birds while I sip some coffee and get fully emmersed.

I'm just a different type of gamer since when ark first came out and care less about chatting with strangers. Also feeling older every day lol.

Yeah, I get that. That's part of the reason why I'm doing my playthrough on a private server with people who are my RL friends.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

So we agree that PvP played in sequence is something that is not really viable. I think the easy explanation here is power creep. In arks case I think it has less to do with the power creep on tames/gear and more to do with the power creep in terms of ability to progress on each map. 

I think most players tend to focus on tames and cry op. I'm guilty of this as will after my encounters trying to fight off shadowmane raiders. The true problem however is progression speed. With the mining drill and a whip a player can farm a weeks worth of island metal runs withing a few minutes on aberration.

Yeah, all of that can be frustrating if you want to play the game in chronological order, agreed.

All I can say about this is that it's a natural consequence of ARK being a survival game rather than a standard MMORPG. You have to be at the leading edge of the power curve if you want to win in PvP.

Having said that, even with traditional MMORPG's it's difficult for a character to be competitive at PvP as the character is progressing through the game. Pretty much every game has their PvP in groups of levels, whether it's Lvl 30-50 in a group for battlegrounds or +/-10 levels in open world PvP. Open world PvP in most MMO's (just like in ARK) consists mostly of ganking lower level characters than in 1-vs-1 duels between evenly matched characters. Only rarely do evenly matched characters meet for a duel at high noon and square off for a fair battle, mostly it's ambushing vulnerable opponents. The major difference between standard MMO's and Survival MMOs' is that you don't lose everything in standard MMO's. But otherwise, power creep applies to almost every game.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

I respect your willingness to come to a middle ground here, as you are right this is something that is hard to prove. That being said, I cannot accept this answer as a conclusion, because kill on sight IS rising on officials servers and while this may be purely anecdotal evidence, I offer one last example to make my point. 

Wipe day on rust-I don't know how familiar you are with rust, but I'm confident you know what day is. On that day you will find that spawning in will have its fair share of nakeds clubbing eachother to death, but you will also find a massive amount of talking and communication even between groups. 

Day 6 on rust-Completely different experience. The beaches are empty and chat is dead. Anybody left alive before the day 7 wipe has 6 days of gear to lose now. They are not going to risk trying to chat with a random dude who may stab them in the back.

Take that into the Ark formula, where wipes do not happen. General advice on forums for official servers actually recommend that you do not talk in global, because players will hunt you down simply for speaking. There is no more interaction in this game and  nobody is going to risk weeks-years of progression by not killing on sight. 

This is not a problem in rust. And no I do not think Ark should have a wipe mechanic, even for PvP. But the lack of player interaction does need to be addressed.

It's important to note that you're mixing two different conversations here. Comparing ARK to Rust is a valid path in a discussion, and I agree with what you have to say about Rust, but it tells us nothing about whether KoS is rising in ARK compared to the past in ARK.

What we were discussing was comparing ARK in 2016 to ARK in 2019 to ARK in 2023 is the comparison we were discussion. It's true that Rust does things differently but that doesn't tell us anything about the frequency of KoS vs non-KoS in ARK over time.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

General advice on forums for official servers actually recommend that you do not talk in global, because players will hunt you down simply for speaking. There is no more interaction in this game and  nobody is going to risk weeks-years of progression by not killing on sight.

That's the exact same advice that was given to people in 2016. Talking in public has always been an invitation to get wiped, meeting a stranger in the open world has always meant the risk of instant combat and a KoS. None of that is even remotely new.

But, as we've agreed, there's no true data that we have to answer this question either way. All we have is anecdotes and feelings. Is KoS more common now than 2016 or 2019? Unless someone is able to get WC to share their data no one can answer that question.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

I can get behind this viewpoint more than the previous one. I can't argue with you about the intentions of the explorer notes, and honestly your explanation of them makes more sense than mine.

The story is absolutely what each of us experience as we play. For me personally, I'm living in a timeline that is intertwined with Nerva, Mei-Yin, Helena, Rockwell and so forth. Their story for me is also a part of my own story. You may find a different story with your own survivor.

This is an interesting idea that I haven't seen anyone else describe. I don't think it matches the lore, but I like it and if it makes you happy to make that your story as you play then more power to you. We should each enjoy the game on your own terms.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

All I can say is that I woke up on a beach with a strange voice (AI?) requesting that I come and find them. To do that in order on official PvP is pretty much impossible, so they should do away with the story mode on PvP all together.

On this point I think you're tripping yourself up and making the game less enjoyable for yourself. To illustrate what I mean let's talk about the lore for a minute.

When you find the notes on The Island they have been left by people who lived long before you (and me, and everyone). There is not one single player-character in ARK that ever met any of these people face-to-face on the island. They're historical characters who we know about but no player has ever met them because they lived on the Island long ago.

Again - You certainly have the right to imagine that your character is living in their time, if that makes the game more fun for you, but that's not what the lore/notes say. To say that you are a contemporary of Mei-Yin or Helena on The Island is like saying that you fought beside William Wallace at Stirling Bridge (or pick any historical reference that makes you happy). We are reading their notes specifically because they are people who lived before we ever arrived, they are people from the historical past of The Island, not living in our present time.

The game is fundamentally designed around the idea that these are historical people who lived in the past. So, while you have the right to imagine yourself living along side them (which I still think is a fun idea) you can't expect the game play or the game mechanics to support your decision to use the lore in a way that the designers never intended. No one has the right to tell you that your idea is wrong, but you also don't have the right to complain that the game doesn't support your custom crafted story idea for yourself when the game was explicitly designed to support a different story.

To draw rough analogy, there are many D&D campaigns in which the DM and the players put their campaign into the Lord of the Rings time period, with their characters even participating in some of the important events & battles of LoTR, but those campaigns are custom crafted stories for the fun of those players, none of them would ever write a letter to the Tolkien estate complaining that their characters aren't listed in the books.

If you want to re-interpret the lore to tell yourself your own personal story, you should, that's creative and interesting. But at some level you have to accept that the game is not going to support your re-interpretation of the lore, the game design is going to support the lore created by WC.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

I have ignored NPCs that I don't care about in games before, so I understand your viewpoint. Unfortunately, I do care about these NPC's. I have refused to read about any of them because I want to draw my own conclusions based on my own experience.

And that's ok, as long as you don't expect the game to bend to your will.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

I have a hard time viewing the lore as a prologue, because much of it will only be discovered near the end game of each map. To bring this back into the fold of tribe vs solo play...it comes down to how your own story unfolds.

That's true... but only because it's a game. Let's talk about this for a moment.

It sounds like you played games in the TBW (time before wikis) so you probably remember what it was like when RPGs were half-game and half-puzzle-solving-mystery. You might even have played games in which you needed to find and understand the lore/notes in order to progress in the game. People loved those game so much that lore books. clue books. puzzle solutions books, etc. immediately came into existence. Which is to say, a sizeable portion of players hated being required to solve puzzles so much that they didn't even want to play/finish the game unless they could find some way to progress without having to do all of that stuff. Heck, it got to the point that the game publishers themselves start publishing these books and lots of games had these clue books published side-by-side with the game. Game publishers discovered they could make a ton of extra money publishing a game and a solution book on the same day, with many players buying both the game and the book at the same time just so they wouldn't have to solve all of the puzzles. And what brought a stop to all of that? The internet, with it's cheap and easy way for players to share solutions, eventually leading to wiki's being a standard feature of gaming.

Now, try to imagine playing ARK in an environment where there was no such think as the wiki, where players had to find and understand the lore/notes in order to figure out how to tame dino's, what artifacts are for and how to spawn boss fights. How many people would play that game? Would you? (I know I wouldn't).

That is the reason why "much of it will only be discovered near the end game of each map" or indeed why many players never bother to find it at all, be cause the wiki exists and because people simply wouldn't play the game if lore discoveries were required to progress.

A small number people, pretty close to zero, would have played ARK if that was how it worked. It would have failed and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

So it's tremendously important to understand that some things happen simply because it's a game. You can play almost every RPG or MMORPG without ever reading a single line of lore. You can play many games... big, big games with lots of back-story... without ever paying attention to quest-text or anything an NPC ever says. But that doesn't change the fact that the lore tells a story that was specifically designed and intended by the game designers.

The story lore of ARK tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the people we're reading about are historical characters who lived in the past, that they are indeed the prologue to every one of us. And the fact that it's a game, which means you can progress in the game without being required to find, read and understand the lore before progressing, doesn't change the fact that this is how the lore was written.

We don't meet Rockwell until Aberration, and the only reason we meet him is because of what happened to him. If he had not been transformed by Element he would have been dead long ago.

We don't meet Helena until Genesis, but only because she was the first Homo Deus, she became a human consciousness within the ARK system. If she had not done so she would have been dead long ago.

 

With all of this said, I'm still not saying that you're wrong for imagining yourself as one of their contemporaries - as long as you don't try to blame the game for refusing to support your personal vision. If re-interpreting your personal game experience makes if more fun for you then you should do it, if re-interpreting the lore with your own personal twist is more fun than you should do it, but you can't blame the game for failing to go along with your personal re-interpretation. It's up to you to figure out how to do both things, make your own interpretation and still enjoy the game. if you re-interpretation is making the game less fun for you then you need to consider whether you're, to some degree, shooting yourself in the foot.

On 2/16/2023 at 4:11 AM, Logan96 said:

For me the story is a single survivor trying to achieve their one objective of finding the mysterious AI that contacts you on the island. That survivor has to deal with both aggressive and friendly tribes, but not become too side tracked to lose sight, or else they may end up like Rockwell.

Ark SP or PvE can be a co-op or single player game from beginning to end yes. And yes you are right that none of the mentioned NPC's have completed the entire story line. But these are NPCs...and where they fail, the survivor (you) are supposed to succeed.

Let's not forget that while our NPC's may have not beaten all the maps they still experienced their own PvP. The issue however is that the documented PvP in the notes speaks of mei-ling riding in on a raptor fighting off squads with guns. 

That poop just straight up does not happen in any ark battle, let along 2v1s with a power gap. The story writers were completely clueless to how battles actually happen in this game, which is why I now claim that not just solo PvP, but PvP in general is broken. PvP is not as intended. 

=====================================================================================

This was a heck of a writeup, Mr. Pipingshot and to be honest I've had a few beers so there may be some lack of coherence in there. I appreciate that you put real thought and effort into your post as well. I'd love to keep this conversation going, but if we do I'm down to keep it a little shorter and maybe down to one point at a time, so we don't burn ourselves out on just the forums lol. 

I've run out of quote boxes, so I'll just refer to actual quotes:

1) "For me the story is a single survivor trying to achieve their one objective of finding the mysterious AI that contacts you on the island. That survivor has to deal with both aggressive and friendly tribes, but not become too side tracked to lose sight, or else they may end up like Rockwell."

For you that's valid, but it's not how the game was conceived nor fundamentally designed (except for SP). The NPC's we're discussing didn't exist as "single survivor"s, they existed as people living in a multi-populated world. In some cases, the fact that they were not merely single survivors is an important part of their stories. Some portion of their importance specifically because they were not single-players, they were participants and leaders in tribe-based PvP. If these important NPC's had tried to solo-PvP we would never have heard of them.

 

2) "Ark SP or PvE can be a co-op or single player game from beginning to end yes. And yes you are right that none of the mentioned NPC's have completed the entire story line. But these are NPCs...and where they fail, the survivor (you) are supposed to succeed."

We're supposed to succeed only because we are not contemporary with them, it's explicitly because we live after they did. If it wasn't for Helena we wouldn't respawn, we'd all live a single life and disappear when we get killed, just like all of the people who lived at the same time as Helena and the other NPC's. Those unknown people all lived single lives until after Helena uploaded herself into the ARK's.

The contradiction here is that you claim you want to live in the lore, but the lore explicitly states that your choices are not true, and then you complain that the lore doesn't support your personal vision. Again, this is like saying that your D&D character went to high school with Frodo and went to Mt. Doom with him, and then complaining that the author of LoTR is raining on your parade by refusing to support your personal vision.

 

3) "Let's not forget that while our NPC's may have not beaten all the maps they still experienced their own PvP. The issue however is that the documented PvP in the notes speaks of mei-ling riding in on a raptor fighting off squads with guns."

There are two responses to this:

a) Right, because when she was alive that was something that was possible to do and now it's not because things have changed over time.

b) Or alternatively... yup, that's normal, it's something that happens in every game's story. There are always characters in story-based games who can do things that the characters can't. Whether you play Warhammer, Conan Exiles, ARK, WoW, etc.... there are NPC's in the back-story who have done things that no player-character has ever done in that game. Whether it's Gandalf casting spells that players can't, or Conan solo-defeating enemies that players can't, or Rockwell using element to become an insane demi-god, there are always things NPC's do that player-characters can't. And conversely there are things the player-characters do (like finishing the entire game) that the NPC's either can't or haven't done.

This is what differentiates your story from their story. Our player characters and our stories are always different from the stories of the NPC's, this is true in every game. You are not Rockwell and he is not you. You are not Mei and she is not you. We're not playing their story, we're each playing our own story.

 

4) "That poop just straight up does not happen in any ark battle, let along 2v1s with a power gap. The story writers were completely clueless to how battles actually happen in this game, which is why I now claim that not just solo PvP, but PvP in general is broken. PvP is not as intended."

This sentiment also has two reasonable responses:

a) Every game has differences between the lore and the game play. If you expect your character to be exactly like the NPC's in the lore then no game will ever satisfy you. Understanding the difference between the NPC's in the backstory and the actual gameplay experience of being a player-character is important to enjoying any game.

b) Or... you're just not as good a she was, that's why she has left lore notes that are part of the game and you haven't. Get on her level, defeat lots of enemies with a raptor and you too can become part of the lore backstory of the game. Obviously that answer is a little tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely.

It's important to remember that there are lots and lots of NPC's that you've never heard of. There were many, many people who died as complete unknowns during the time of Gaius, Helena, Rockwell, Mei-Yen, Diana, etc., people who never left explorers' note, people who's names no one will ever know. The NPC's we know by name are extreme exceptions, people who accomplished legendary things in their own lifetimes, that's why we know who they are. It should be extremely hard, and quite often impossible, to equal the feats that NPC's have accomplished otherwise they wouldn't be important enough to know their names in the first place. They became known to us specifically because they were epic people so if you want your character to join them in the pantheon of greats all you have to do is become epic too.

 

5) "This was a heck of a writeup, Mr. Pipingshot and to be honest I've had a few beers so there may be some lack of coherence in there. I appreciate that you put real thought and effort into your post as well. I'd love to keep this conversation going..."

Glad to, I enjoy discussions like this.

"...but if we do I'm down to keep it a little shorter and maybe down to one point at a time, so we don't burn ourselves out on just the forums lol."

I'm good either way. If you want to discuss specific points individually feel free to break up your response into multiple posts. 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Pipinghot

[Joebl0w13]

37 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

Well, it is a tribe based game, so if you're trying to PvP solo you're taking your life into your own hands. After all, you wouldn't expect to win 1v15 in a first person shooter, you wouldn't expect to solo-win a 10-person battleground in WoW (or equivalent RPG's), you wouldn't expect to solo a 5-person dungeon in WoW (or equivalent RPG's).

The very fact that you can even attempt group content in ARK is an improvement over other games. Single-player is the specific game mode that WC designed to allow people to play the entire game solo, the other game modes were fundamentally conceived as being group/team game modes, so if you choose to solo-play a group mode then it's up to you to accept responsibility for your choice. I'm not criticizing that decision in any way, it's perfectly legit to try any game in hard mode if that's what you want to do, but it's on you when you do so.

Yeah, I get that. That's part of the reason why I'm doing my playthrough on a private server with people who are my RL friends.

Yeah, all of that can be frustrating if you want to play the game in chronological order, agreed.

All I can say about this is that it's a natural consequence of ARK being a survival game rather than a standard MMORPG. You have to be at the leading edge of the power curve if you want to win in PvP.

Having said that, even with traditional MMORPG's it's difficult for a character to be competitive at PvP as the character is progressing through the game. Pretty much every game has their PvP in groups of levels, whether it's Lvl 30-50 in a group for battlegrounds or +/-10 levels in open world PvP. Open world PvP in most MMO's (just like in ARK) consists mostly of ganking lower level characters than in 1-vs-1 duels between evenly matched characters. Only rarely do evenly matched characters meet for a duel at high noon and square off for a fair battle, mostly it's ambushing vulnerable opponents. The major difference between standard MMO's and Survival MMOs' is that you don't lose everything in standard MMO's. But otherwise, power creep applies to almost every game.

It's important to note that you're mixing two different conversations here. Comparing ARK to Rust is a valid path in a discussion, and I agree with what you have to say about Rust, but it tells us nothing about whether KoS is rising in ARK compared to the past in ARK.

What we were discussing was comparing ARK in 2016 to ARK in 2019 to ARK in 2023 is the comparison we were discussion. It's true that Rust does things differently but that doesn't tell us anything about the frequency of KoS vs non-KoS in ARK over time.

That's the exact same advice that was given to people in 2016. Talking in public has always been an invitation to get wiped, meeting a stranger in the open world has always meant the risk of instant combat and a KoS. None of that is even remotely new.

But, as we've agreed, there's no true data that we have to answer this question either way. All we have is anecdotes and feelings. Is KoS more common now than 2016 or 2019? Unless someone is able to get WC to share their data no one can answer that question.

This is an interesting idea that I haven't seen anyone else describe. I don't think it matches the lore, but I like it and if it makes you happy to make that your story as you play then more power to you. We should each enjoy the game on your own terms.

On this point I think you're tripping yourself up and making the game less enjoyable for yourself. To illustrate what I mean let's talk about the lore for a minute.

When you find the notes on The Island they have been left by people who lived long before you (and me, and everyone). There is not one single player-character in ARK that ever met any of these people face-to-face on the island. They're historical characters who we know about but no player has ever met them because they lived on the Island long ago.

Again - You certainly have the right to imagine that your character is living in their time, if that makes the game more fun for you, but that's not what the lore/notes say. To say that you are a contemporary of Mei-Yin or Helena on The Island is like saying that you fought beside William Wallace at Stirling Bridge (or pick any historical reference that makes you happy). We are reading their notes specifically because they are people who lived before we ever arrived, they are people from the historical past of The Island, not living in our present time.

The game is fundamentally designed around the idea that these are historical people who lived in the past. So, while you have the right to imagine yourself living along side them (which I still think is a fun idea) you can't expect the game play or the game mechanics to support your decision to use the lore in a way that the designers never intended. No one has the right to tell you that your idea is wrong, but you also don't have the right to complain that the game doesn't support your custom crafted story idea for yourself when the game was explicitly designed to support a different story.

To draw rough analogy, there are many D&D campaigns in which the DM and the players put their campaign into the Lord of the Rings time period, with their characters even participating in some of the important events & battles of LoTR, but those campaigns are custom crafted stories for the fun of those players, none of them would ever write a letter to the Tolkien estate complaining that their characters aren't listed in the books.

If you want to re-interpret the lore to tell yourself your own personal story, you should, that's creative and interesting. But at some level you have to accept that the game is not going to support your re-interpretation of the lore, the game design is going to support the lore created by WC.

And that's ok, as long as you don't expect the game to bend to your will.

That's true... but only because it's a game. Let's talk about this for a moment.

It sounds like you played games in the TBW (time before wikis) so you probably remember what it was like when RPGs were half-game and half-puzzle-solving-mystery. You might even have played games in which you needed to find and understand the lore/notes in order to progress in the game. People loved those game so much that lore books. clue books. puzzle solutions books, etc. immediately came into existence. Which is to say, a sizeable portion of players hated being required to solve puzzles so much that they didn't even want to play/finish the game unless they could find some way to progress without having to do all of that stuff. Heck, it got to the point that the game publishers themselves start publishing these books and lots of games had these clue books published side-by-side with the game. Game publishers discovered they could make a ton of extra money publishing a game and a solution book on the same day, with many players buying both the game and the book at the same time just so they wouldn't have to solve all of the puzzles. And what brought a stop to all of that? The internet, with it's cheap and easy way for players to share solutions, eventually leading to wiki's being a standard feature of gaming.

Now, try to imagine playing ARK in an environment where there was no such think as the wiki, where players had to find and understand the lore/notes in order to figure out how to tame dino's, what artifacts are for and how to spawn boss fights. How many people would play that game? Would you? (I know I wouldn't).

That is the reason why "much of it will only be discovered near the end game of each map" or indeed why many players never bother to find it at all, be cause the wiki exists and because people simply wouldn't play the game if lore discoveries were required to progress.

A small number people, pretty close to zero, would have played ARK if that was how it worked. It would have failed and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

So it's tremendously important to understand that some things happen simply because it's a game. You can play almost every RPG or MMORPG without ever reading a single line of lore. You can play many games... big, big games with lots of back-story... without ever paying attention to quest-text or anything an NPC ever says. But that doesn't change the fact that the lore tells a story that was specifically designed and intended by the game designers.

The story lore of ARK tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the people we're reading about are historical characters who lived in the past, that they are indeed the prologue to every one of us. And the fact that it's a game, which means you can progress in the game without being required to find, read and understand the lore before progressing, doesn't change the fact that this is how the lore was written.

We don't meet Rockwell until Aberration, and the only reason we meet him is because of what happened to him. If he had not been transformed by Element he would have been dead long ago.

We don't meet Helena until Genesis, but only because she was the first Homo Deus, she became a human consciousness within the ARK system. If she had not done so she would have been dead long ago.

 

With all of this said, I'm still not saying that you're wrong for imagining yourself as one of their contemporaries - as long as you don't try to blame the game for refusing to support your personal vision. If re-interpreting your personal game experience makes if more fun for you then you should do it, if re-interpreting the lore with your own personal twist is more fun than you should do it, but you can't blame the game for failing to go along with your personal re-interpretation. It's up to you to figure out how to do both things, make your own interpretation and still enjoy the game. if you re-interpretation is making the game less fun for you then you need to consider whether you're, to some degree, shooting yourself in the foot.

I've run out of quote boxes, so I'll just refer to actual quotes:

1) "For me the story is a single survivor trying to achieve their one objective of finding the mysterious AI that contacts you on the island. That survivor has to deal with both aggressive and friendly tribes, but not become too side tracked to lose sight, or else they may end up like Rockwell."

For you that's valid, but it's not how the game was conceived nor fundamentally designed (except for SP). The NPC's we're discussing didn't exist as "single survivor"s, they existed as people living in a multi-populated world. In some cases, the fact that they were not merely single survivors is an important part of their stories. Some portion of their importance specifically because they were not single-players, they were participants and leaders in tribe-based PvP. If these important NPC's had tried to solo-PvP we would never have heard of them.

 

2) "Ark SP or PvE can be a co-op or single player game from beginning to end yes. And yes you are right that none of the mentioned NPC's have completed the entire story line. But these are NPCs...and where they fail, the survivor (you) are supposed to succeed."

We're supposed to succeed only because we are not contemporary with them, it's explicitly because we live after they did. If it wasn't for Helena we wouldn't respawn, we'd all live a single life and disappear when we get killed, just like all of the people who lived at the same time as Helena and the other NPC's. Those unknown people all lived single lives until after Helena uploaded herself into the ARK's.

The contradiction here is that you claim you want to live in the lore, but the lore explicitly states that your choices are not true, and then you complain that the lore doesn't support your personal vision. Again, this is like saying that your D&D character went to high school with Frodo and went to Mt. Doom with him, and then complaining that the author of LoTR is raining on your parade by refusing to support your personal vision.

 

3) "Let's not forget that while our NPC's may have not beaten all the maps they still experienced their own PvP. The issue however is that the documented PvP in the notes speaks of mei-ling riding in on a raptor fighting off squads with guns."

There are two responses to this:

a) Right, because when she was alive that was something that was possible to do and now it's not because things have changed over time.

b) Or alternatively... yup, that's normal, it's something that happens in every game's story. There are always characters in story-based games who can do things that the characters can't. Whether you play Warhammer, Conan Exiles, ARK, WoW, etc.... there are NPC's in the back-story who have done things that no player-character has ever done in that game. Whether it's Gandalf casting spells that players can't, or Conan solo-defeating enemies that players can't, or Rockwell using element to become an insane demi-god, there are always things NPC's do that player-characters can't. And conversely there are things the player-characters do (like finishing the entire game) that the NPC's either can't or haven't done.

This is what differentiates your story from their story. Our player characters and our stories are always different from the stories of the NPC's, this is true in every game. You are not Rockwell and he is not you. You are not Mei and she is not you. We're not playing their story, we're each playing our own story.

 

4) "That poop just straight up does not happen in any ark battle, let along 2v1s with a power gap. The story writers were completely clueless to how battles actually happen in this game, which is why I now claim that not just solo PvP, but PvP in general is broken. PvP is not as intended."

This sentiment also has two reasonable responses:

a) Every game has differences between the lore and the game play. If you expect your character to be exactly like the NPC's in the lore then no game will ever satisfy you. Understanding the difference between the NPC's in the backstory and the actual gameplay experience of being a player-character is important to enjoying any game.

b) Or... you're just not as good a she was, that's why she has left lore notes that are part of the game and you haven't. Get on her level, defeat lots of enemies with a raptor and you too can become part of the lore backstory of the game. Obviously that answer is a little tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely.

It's important to remember that there are lots and lots of NPC's that you've never heard of. There were many, many people who died as complete unknowns during the time of Gaius, Helena, Rockwell, Mei-Yen, Diana, etc., people who never left explorers' note, people who's names no one will ever know. The NPC's we know by name are extreme exceptions, people who accomplished legendary things in their own lifetimes, that's why we know who they are. It should be extremely hard, and quite often impossible, to equal the feats that NPC's have accomplished otherwise they wouldn't be important enough to know their names in the first place. They became known to us specifically because they were epic people so if you want your character to join them in the pantheon of greats all you have to do is become epic too.

 

5) "This was a heck of a writeup, Mr. Pipingshot and to be honest I've had a few beers so there may be some lack of coherence in there. I appreciate that you put real thought and effort into your post as well. I'd love to keep this conversation going..."

Glad to, I enjoy discussions like this.

"...but if we do I'm down to keep it a little shorter and maybe down to one point at a time, so we don't burn ourselves out on just the forums lol."

I'm good either way. If you want to discuss specific points individually feel free to break up your response into multiple posts. 

Hey now, we don't pay you by the word here

[Pipinghot]

12 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Hey now, we don't pay you by the word here

This is where I do my pro bono work.

[DirkInSA]

3 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

This is where I do my pro bono work.

Go chip in on my "crowd fund" PVP on 

LOL LOL

[Logan96]

On 2/27/2023 at 6:14 PM, Pipinghot said:

snip

Not trying to revive a dead thread here. Just coming back after a nice break from the game and wanted to thank you again for the effort you put into your answers.  With a little bit of time to reflect I do think that your answers here make more sense to me than they did before. Sorry that I didn't read it sooner!