Is this a bug or some kind of "feature" of the game?

[Denverson]

Before describing the situation, I will clarify - I play the local version, the Ostrov map.
At the very beginning of the game, I met a quetzal on the map several times, but since I didn’t need it, I didn’t touch it and went about my business.
But the other day I needed him and I flew to look for him where I met him. As a result, I spent about 4 hours of real time in that place, but I never found it. I started watching different videos about where the quetzal is found, then again every day for several hours of searching and nothing ...
Quite desperate, I decided to install a mod to search for dino (and I'm one of those who like to play without mods at all, but I had to). So, having flown around the map with this mod (again, several hours of real time), I discovered ... that there is no quetzal on the map of the Island at all, nowhere!
And it’s okay if I killed him before that, drove him somewhere on the map, but no, I didn’t touch him at all throughout the entire playing time spent in the ARK.
And now I have a question - what to do, how can I get quetzal on the Island map ??!
These bugs are already some sort of overkill, as for me.

P.S.: if the translation is not accurate in some places - I translated it with the help of Google translator, do not be angry

[Pipinghot]

17 minutes ago, Denverson said:

what to do, how can I get quetzal on the Island map ??!

At any given moment in time, there will be from 0-4 quetzals on The Island. There are four spawn points, and each spawn point will have 0 or 1 quetzals in that area.

If you look at this spawn map of The Island you will be able to see that the map is divided into four zones, each zone may or may not have one quetzal each at any specific time.

https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Spawn_Map/The_Island?creature=Quetzal

The quetzal that you found was either killed by something before you went back to get it, or it got de-spawned by the server for being too "old".

[Denverson]

20 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

At any given moment in time, there will be from 0-4 quetzals on The Island. There are four spawn points, and each spawn point will have 0 or 1 quetzals in that area.

If you look at this spawn map of The Island you will be able to see that the map is divided into four zones, each zone may or may not have one quetzal each at any specific time.

https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Spawn_Map/The_Island?creature=Quetzal

The quetzal that you found was either killed by something before you went back to get it, or it got de-spawned by the server for being too "old".

Well, it’s good that quetzals may not be on the map somewhere - I didn’t know that. But one moment - several days of real time, for several hours there is not a single quetzal in any of the four regions. It seems to me that this no longer looks like a random spawn, but more like the game does not want to spawn them due to a bug. I once encountered the problem of deep sea containers spawning, but the time in search of a quetzal is not comparable. I hiccupped Quetzal for a very long time, because I thought that it might still depend on the altitude of the flight, maybe I didn’t see it somewhere, etc.
4 days (real, not gaming), every day for at least 6 hours of real time I was looking for. In game days, about one and a half - two days pass for me in an hour of real time. Maybe I'm in a hurry again, but it seems to me that in a few dozen game days the quetzal could have appeared at least somewhere, but it was nowhere to be found (I flew on a fast dyno to move faster between the zones where the quetzal flies, when I reached the zone I naturally flew slowly to load all the textures)

I almost forgot to mention one more thing - when there was a Christmas event, I often flew for gift boxes and just at such a height and where the quetzal flight zone is located. Then I did not pay attention, but now remembering - I did not meet a quetzal.

[SunsetErosion]

1 hour ago, Denverson said:

Well, it’s good that quetzals may not be on the map somewhere - I didn’t know that. But one moment - several days of real time, for several hours there is not a single quetzal in any of the four regions. It seems to me that this no longer looks like a random spawn, but more like the game does not want to spawn them due to a bug. I once encountered the problem of deep sea containers spawning, but the time in search of a quetzal is not comparable. I hiccupped Quetzal for a very long time, because I thought that it might still depend on the altitude of the flight, maybe I didn’t see it somewhere, etc.
4 days (real, not gaming), every day for at least 6 hours of real time I was looking for. In game days, about one and a half - two days pass for me in an hour of real time. Maybe I'm in a hurry again, but it seems to me that in a few dozen game days the quetzal could have appeared at least somewhere, but it was nowhere to be found (I flew on a fast dyno to move faster between the zones where the quetzal flies, when I reached the zone I naturally flew slowly to load all the textures)

I almost forgot to mention one more thing - when there was a Christmas event, I often flew for gift boxes and just at such a height and where the quetzal flight zone is located. Then I did not pay attention, but now remembering - I did not meet a quetzal.

 

1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

The quetzal that you found was either killed by something before you went back to get it, or it got de-spawned by the server for being too "old".

I think I've never ever seen a Quetzal die from wildlife... Neither can I barely imagen it happening... Well, the situation could occur, but its far-fetched...
Despawning creatures in Singleplayer are probably a thing, this is the most logical explaination. Though having it not respawn is an issue.
Right now I think about the game beeing to crowded with other wildlife, "low" performance preventing a new spawn.
Maybe OP can try adjusting wildlife spawnrates, kill wild animals to clean up, or use cheats to kill wildlife and hope a new one spawns...

https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/2846795319609089921/

[Pipinghot]

5 hours ago, Denverson said:

But one moment - several days of real time, for several hours there is not a single quetzal in any of the four regions. It seems to me that this no longer looks like a random spawn, but more like the game does not want to spawn them due to a bug. I once encountered the problem of deep sea containers spawning, but the time in search of a quetzal is not comparable. I hiccupped Quetzal for a very long time, because I thought that it might still depend on the altitude of the flight, maybe I didn’t see it somewhere, etc.
4 days (real, not gaming), every day for at least 6 hours of real time I was looking for. In game days, about one and a half - two days pass for me in an hour of real time. Maybe I'm in a hurry again, but it seems to me that in a few dozen game days the quetzal could have appeared at least somewhere, but it was nowhere to be found (I flew on a fast dyno to move faster between the zones where the quetzal flies, when I reached the zone I naturally flew slowly to load all the textures)

I agree that this seems like a very long time for quetzals to be completely absent. You might want to try using the "DestroyWildDinos" command, which will clear all of the spawn points on the map and should allow new quetzals to spawn.

[DirkInSA]

Have you tired going to where the Qwetz is supposed to spawn and murdering all that you see. In the hope that a re-spawn is kicked and you get one? There is a more scientific way to do it by googling the creatures that "share" the Qwetz spawn point and only knocking those - but a random bit of genocide often does the trick.
My experience on single player is that the spawns are very dodgy, and often not triggered.- so @Pipinghot's answer of a killlwilddinons console command will for sure do it - even if it takes several goes to get one to spawn. 

[GrumpyBear]

Things despawn.  If you see them, the clock has started on how long they will stick around. I don't know the length of time, but we find this out the hard way when taming something and leaving the area before the taming process finishes.  If it was one of those animals set to despawn, it does....right after the taming process finishes with nobody around.

 

Someone suggested something about about them getting killed by wildlife, that can happen but its super rare.  Nuance - It depends on its flight path and the landscape below it.  I've seen them run into the ground on Genesis 2 because the heights of lands it flies around vary greatly.

[Denverson]

6 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

 

I think I've never ever seen a Quetzal die from wildlife... Neither can I barely imagen it happening... Well, the situation could occur, but its far-fetched...
Despawning creatures in Singleplayer are probably a thing, this is the most logical explaination. Though having it not respawn is an issue.
Right now I think about the game beeing to crowded with other wildlife, "low" performance preventing a new spawn.
Maybe OP can try adjusting wildlife spawnrates, kill wild animals to clean up, or use cheats to kill wildlife and hope a new one spawns...

https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/2846795319609089921/

I also had a similar thought, because I basically built a base, mined resources and did not touch wild dinos.

[Denverson]

The saying is true that instead of one head, several are better when you need to think. As for the fact that other dinos prevent the quetzal from spawning, I guessed, but now this is no longer a guess, but a certainty. That is, I understood the root of the problem, thanks, I will try.

[Denverson]

This is what the language barrier means - when I was looking for information about a problem, I typed text in a language I knew, but now it was worth writing a request in English and the first post was immediately about the same problem( https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/1639790664930900130/ )
The game is 2015, and there are still such unpleasant bugs ...

[Pipinghot]

Just now, SunsetErosion said:

I think I've never ever seen a Quetzal die from wildlife...

I have, but yeah it's quite rare, seen it only twice. It can happen when the quetz is in a mountainous region that allows it to fly into the side of a peak/hill/mountian/column. Even so, despawning is obviously the far more likely answer.

[wizard03]

18 hours ago, Denverson said:

Before describing the situation, I will clarify - I play the local version, the Ostrov map.
At the very beginning of the game, I met a quetzal on the map several times, but since I didn’t need it, I didn’t touch it and went about my business.
But the other day I needed him and I flew to look for him where I met him. As a result, I spent about 4 hours of real time in that place, but I never found it. I started watching different videos about where the quetzal is found, then again every day for several hours of searching and nothing ...
Quite desperate, I decided to install a mod to search for dino (and I'm one of those who like to play without mods at all, but I had to). So, having flown around the map with this mod (again, several hours of real time), I discovered ... that there is no quetzal on the map of the Island at all, nowhere!
And it’s okay if I killed him before that, drove him somewhere on the map, but no, I didn’t touch him at all throughout the entire playing time spent in the ARK.
And now I have a question - what to do, how can I get quetzal on the Island map ??!
These bugs are already some sort of overkill, as for me.

P.S.: if the translation is not accurate in some places - I translated it with the help of Google translator, do not be angry

this is a bug, sadly it happens a lot. You must do a dino wipe to have all dino's respawn. 

Go into admin mode, type in DestroyWildDinos and then look again.