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I Lost it All Again


Woody714
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So, I was travelling the Arks, pulling together my resources to finally finish the playthrough that has been lost twice already.  I transferred to The Island where I had been an hour before. I had a 4 minute cool down on the spawn bed at the Red Ob...so I did household stuff and lost track of time. I came back and the Xbox was on the home screen so I hit "Ark" and apparently started an entire new game and lost my character...on all the maps. I returned to Rag to check, but I have no character to log in with.

 

Can I fill out a bug report or something to try to get my character back? I have no current save points on a flash drive.  This is devastating again...

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nothing you can do but submit a ticket Im affraid and hope that a server admin is able or willing to help. If your on SP, the only thing you can do is cheat everything over to a new character, cheat levels, cheat engrams, and cheat boss's beat.
In other words, your kinda SOL no matter what you do. The game crashing and wiping characters has gotten REALLY bad ever since the cinematics dropped.

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Wow...this is a current issue again? Thought it was just me and pilot error. That said, I cannot express this passionately enough, but how ridiculous is it that save points...a simple damn save point, is just seemingly impossible with this game. I get the idea that absolutely no one at Wildcard has any respect at all for the 3 years of work I have put into this game...including at least two other episodes just like this. I really don't care if it is Microsoft and Xbox pushing hard for cloud gaming and limiting save points or if it is some dinosaur (haha)  of an ideal for balance that exists to encourage tough game play...whatever...it is beyond the pale to just dump someone's hobby down the crapper for no other real reason than negligence. I am not sure how much more of my time and money I should invest in an activity, that while I love it at it's face, is certainly detrimental to my mental health. Get real and make a game that works...single player pleeb out...

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1 minute ago, Woody714 said:

Wow...this is a current issue again? Thought it was just me and pilot error. That said, I cannot express this passionately enough, but how ridiculous is it that save points...a simple damn save point, is just seemingly impossible with this game. I get the idea that absolutely no one at Wildcard has any respect at all for the 3 years of work I have put into this game...including at least two other episodes just like this. I really don't care if it is Microsoft and Xbox pushing hard for cloud gaming and limiting save points or if it is some dinosaur (haha)  of an ideal for balance that exists to encourage tough game play...whatever...it is beyond the pale to just dump someone's hobby down the crapper for no other real reason than negligence. I am not sure how much more of my time and money I should invest in an activity, that while I love it at it's face, is certainly detrimental to my mental health. Get real and make a game that works...single player pleeb out...

If you're playing single-player you have the ability to back up your game, and the fact that this has happened twice before should demonstrate how important it is to do backups. Everyone here can feel your pain, if feels like you shouldn't need to back up your game when it's single-player on your machine, but the reality is that it is necessary.

This isn't unique to ARK, it's necessary for plenty of other games too. You can fight against reality or learn to do what you must in order to protect your time from being wasted.

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7 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

If you're playing single-player you have the ability to back up your game, and the fact that this has happened twice before should demonstrate how important it is to do backups. Everyone here can feel your pain, if feels like you shouldn't need to back up your game when it's single-player on your machine, but the reality is that it is necessary.

This isn't unique to ARK, it's necessary for plenty of other games too. You can fight against reality or learn to do what you must in order to protect your time from being wasted.

The problem is actually creating and using a save point on an Xbox One S. I do have a savepoint somewhere on a flashdrive. It has awesome bug rexes from Crystal Isles that seem to have stats of what an Alpha Rex would have. That savepoint is the one I used like 6 months or so ago when the PS4 seemed unplayable again and I switched back to Xbox...wanting to work towards Mjolnir. It is a complete pain and I will need to research how to access and load it. Creating a new one isn't as easy as just pressing a button. I made a road trip and spent $20 for the flashdrive that saved the bug rexes. The last time I checked, if memory serves me, I could only put one save point on the drive without erasing the other. So now I need to learn either how to partition a flashdrive for use with Xbox or dump the drive onto a pc...if that is possible. I could make another trip and spend $20 again every single time I felt a need to back up my game. Or, I could tell the world how ridiculous it is that this could even happen to someone simply by hitting the wrong button once or even through no fault of their own. I played Grounded and had a crash once or twice that wiped out current progress, but the game actually saves progress and, here is the kicker, keeps more than just the last back-up. It's almost like they could forsee that bad things could happen and have made a system that is thoughtful and courteous to the consumer.

Yeah...I could get into the cycle of swapping and/or dumping and refreshing flashdrives every single time I play the game, but I honestly thought Wildcard was actually making improvements to the game and the precious user data that was not going to be lost for the umpteenth time would be safe. I drank the Kool-Aid maybe? 

All I know is that it should not be so easy to get hosed this bad.

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1 hour ago, Woody714 said:

Can I fill out a bug report or something to try to get my character back?

I'm almost 100% sure that if you overwrote your character, it's gone for good.

That said, support 'may' be able to rebuild you a new one similar to your old one.

Edited by Joebl0w13
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Yeah...now that I poke around, I may have had the good rexes on a new character that was left over when the previous character was lost. In other words, I don't have a back-up of the good rexes and I am crushed. I am not even sure it is possible to back-up on Xbox...I might have gotten that confused with PS4. I am at a total lose right now as to why, what or even if. Like wow...

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So there may be hope. I actually "cleared" all local data from the Xbox, biting the bullet and starting fresh...on The Island. Somewhere around raft building level, I noticed a party dodo on the beach. My lost play still had a party dodo or two as I didn't dino wipe for ages. So I proceed on to find my base still there.  I researched claim command/cheats and was able to claim the gate, break in and start taking back my stuff.  There should be hope for the rare rexes. 

 

Sorry to flip. You only ever get to see the negative. That said, for the love of God and all that is Holy, please find a way to keep people from destroying everything with one errant click.

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2 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

So there may be hope. I actually "cleared" all local data from the Xbox, biting the bullet and starting fresh...on The Island. Somewhere around raft building level, I noticed a party dodo on the beach. My lost play still had a party dodo or two as I didn't dino wipe for ages. So I proceed on to find my base still there.  I researched claim command/cheats and was able to claim the gate, break in and start taking back my stuff.  There should be hope for the rare rexes. 

 

Sorry to flip. You only ever get to see the negative. That said, for the love of God and all that is Holy, please find a way to keep people from destroying everything with one errant click.

Good to hear you got back up and running. 

This sounds a lot like when I used to play 7 Days to Die (would still be playing it if not for this).

There is an actual game breaking bug in there where half or so of your base would poof. It's a long story. But only chance you had when it happened was to immediately force close the game and delete your local cache. If you got lucky and the cloud sync didn't happen, it worked, and you logged back into your old base. 

You have to love game companies and their ability to absolutely waste your time with things like this. Fixing stuff like this doesn't bring in new revenue. So they don't. Business 101. Don't spend a dime on anything that doesn't return a profit.

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55 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

 

You have to love game companies and their ability to absolutely waste your time with things like this. Fixing stuff like this doesn't bring in new revenue. So they don't. Business 101. Don't spend a dime on anything that doesn't return a profit.

 

Nothing like building brand reputation...wait...I was born in the 20th Century when reputation mattered. I can guaranty you if there was a vehicle made that pinched your butt every time you sat in the front seat, no one would buy it for very long. 

Edited by Woody714
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7 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

 

Nothing like building brand reputation...wait...I was born in the 20th Century when reputation mattered. I can guaranty you if there was a vehicle made that pinched your butt every time you sat in the front seat, no one would buy it for very long. 

That was back before everything was expendable. Now, everything is new, soon to be trash or trash. 

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15 hours ago, Woody714 said:

The problem is actually creating and using a save point on an Xbox One S.

Understood, creating saves for some platforms is easier than others. But... that doesn't change the fundamental reality that games sometimes have problems. It's just as frustrating to me, and to others, as it is to you, but reality is reality. We all feel your pain, but our sympathy doesn't fix your problem.

15 hours ago, Woody714 said:

Or, I could tell the world how ridiculous it is that this could even happen to someone simply by hitting the wrong button once or even through no fault of their own.

Agreed, it's ridiculous in any game, not just ARK. But... reality again. Even games that create auto-backups can have lost data or corrupt save files, I've had that happen to me in multiple games that were supposed to be backing things up.

Don't get me wrong, if the need to make manual backups means that you don't want to play a game, that's a valid choice for you to make. I've had problems with quite a few games over the years that required manual backups and in some cases I didn't enjoy the game enough to do it, I just quit playing them. If that's the choice you want to make then I won't try to tell you that you should keep playing.

The points that I'm making are a) this isn't unique to ARK and b) if you want to keep playing, which is entirely your choice, then manual backups are a solution that would let you do so.

15 hours ago, Woody714 said:

I played Grounded and had a crash once or twice that wiped out current progress, but the game actually saves progress and, here is the kicker, keeps more than just the last back-up. It's almost like they could forsee that bad things could happen and have made a system that is thoughtful and courteous to the consumer.

If you don't have enough space on your XBox to keep multiple manual saves, why would the game be able to keep multiple auto-saves? Disk space is disk space regardless of whether it's manual or automated. If you have to buy flash drives to make backups manually then how do you think the game would make automatic backups for you? Those are sincere questions, by the way, I'm not just trying to be argumentative.

I don't own a XBox but I play on PC and from what I've been told the folder structures for the save files for ARK are basically the same.

On my PC the save structure would be:

..\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved

 

As far as I know that's also true on the XBox, so to save a specific map would mean making a backup copy of the folder for that individual map. On my computer these folders look like this...

The Island =  ..\Saved\SavedArksLocal (451 MB)

The Center = ..\Saved\TheCenterSavedArksLocal (146 MB)

Scorched Earth = ..\Saved\ScorchedEarth_PSavedArksLocal (91.8 MB)

...and so on.

I could make a backup of all of my map folders at once on a flash drive, or multiple copies of any specific, individual map if I was playing on the same map a lot. And assuming the disk space usage on XBox is comparable you could do the same thing.

15 hours ago, Woody714 said:

Yeah...I could get into the cycle of swapping and/or dumping and refreshing flashdrives every single time I play the game, but I honestly thought Wildcard was actually making improvements to the game and the precious user data that was not going to be lost for the umpteenth time would be safe. I drank the Kool-Aid maybe? 

All I know is that it should not be so easy to get hosed this bad.

Yeah, I understand those feelings (and I think most other people here do to). The decision is yours.

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11 hours ago, Woody714 said:

Nothing like building brand reputation...wait...I was born in the 20th Century when reputation mattered. I can guaranty you if there was a vehicle made that pinched your butt every time you sat in the front seat, no one would buy it for very long. 

Well, for starters that's a bad choice of comparison. The physical world has tons and tons (and tons and more tons) of examples of products companies that failed or harmed consumers during the 20th century "when reputation mattered". Looking backwards through rose colored lenses isn't doing yourself any favors.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/07/11/50-worst-product-flops-of-all-time/36734837/

https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/the-21-worst-product-flops-of-all-time.html

https://www.al.com/news/2016/02/25_most_dangerous_products_in.html

The reason we have organizations like the FDA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Consumer Reports, Underwriters Laboratory, OSHA, and so many others is specifically because "building brand reputation" is a game of smoke and mirrors that has very little to do with the actual quality of the products.

 

And beyond this, the games industry has a looong history of anti-consumer practices right from the very beginning.

You could...

https://www.thegamer.com/game-breaking-bugs-famous-video-games/

...write a book...

https://www.thegamer.com/20-game-glitches-that-completely-ruined-games/

...about all of the games...

https://screenrant.com/worst-bugs-video-game-breaking-pokemon-mega-man/

...that treated players like human trash...

https://www.ranker.com/list/why-people-hate-ea/john-saavedra

...while making tons of money...

https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/how-electronic-arts-stopped-being-the-worst-company-in-america/

...along the way.

 

Again, rose colored lenses are not your friend.

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Well, it's nice someone who apparently has no official power to advise or aid with any specifics feels free to offer that I could simply not play the game...my choice. I would offer that a forum such as this is a valid place to petition for simple and basic change...such change that I feel would benefit all Ark consumers. Also, somewhere in the previous postings I referenced that I am not 100% sure manual saves of any type are possible on Xbox One S as I may have had previous save points confused with my use of a PS4 to also play Ark. The Xbox play-through has the best dinos and loot, so I am most interested in utilizing the Xbox data. I do not know how to manipulate the Xbox data if it is even possible.

That leads me to the question of the day. After destroying my old base, all but the plumbing and electric which I could not claim with "Givetome", I was able to level my new character to 89 and rebuild a new base at another location. I took all the cryos and they seem to be mine now. So, being all settled in again on The Island, I tried to travel to Lost Island to get the good stuff. No joy...for some reason, I have no choice to download a character and a level 1 human spawns in. I was able to delete the local Xbox data, and when I played again, the game resynced and I was able to spawn on The Island with the level 89 character again. I tried once more from the Ob...upload character, cancel, exit game and load Lost Island. No joy...no option to download character.

Now what? Also, is there a cheat to claim the utilities somehow? My only other option is to start at level 1 again on Lost Island so I can reclaim my "good stuff". But what a grind. And then I assume I would have to delete all progress on all maps to enable my new character to use them via travel? The new base on The Island included? lol..

 

sigh...

 

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30 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

Well, it's nice someone who apparently has no official power to advise or aid with any specifics feels free to offer that I could simply not play the game...my choice.

Wait, are you actually complaining that a thread you started in the "General Discussion" forum resulted in a... general discussion?

30 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

I would offer that a forum such as this is a valid place to petition for simple and basic change...such change that I feel would benefit all Ark consumers.

In one section of the forums that's true, that's exactly what the "Suggestions" forum is for (just like with many other games). Regardless of whether we have had a general discussion about other workarounds to the problem, you should definitely post any suggestions you want to make for the devs to read in the Suggestions forum. They don't (as far as I know) read the General Discussion" forum, this is a place where players basically discuss things among themselves.

30 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

Also, somewhere in the previous postings I referenced that I am not 100% sure manual saves of any type are possible on Xbox One S as I may have had previous save points confused with my use of a PS4 to also play Ark. The Xbox play-through has the best dinos and loot, so I am most interested in utilizing the Xbox data. I do not know how to manipulate the Xbox data if it is even possible.

Hopefully someone who has more experience with your model of Xbox will be able to help with that. I mean, I hope it's obvious that we all feel your pain. We may have given you answers that don't make you happy, but nothing in that implies a lack of sympathy.

30 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

That leads me to the question of the day. After destroying my old base, all but the plumbing and electric which I could not claim with "Givetome", I was able to level my new character to 89 and rebuild a new base at another location. I took all the cryos and they seem to be mine now. So, being all settled in again on The Island, I tried to travel to Lost Island to get the good stuff. No joy...for some reason, I have no choice to download a character and a level 1 human spawns in. I was able to delete the local Xbox data, and when I played again, the game resynced and I was able to spawn on The Island with the level 89 character again. I tried once more from the Ob...upload character, cancel, exit game and load Lost Island. No joy...no option to download character.

Now what? Also, is there a cheat to claim the utilities somehow? My only other option is to start at level 1 again on Lost Island so I can reclaim my "good stuff". But what a grind. And then I assume I would have to delete all progress on all maps to enable my new character to use them via travel? The new base on The Island included? lol..

That does sound wonky, not sure why it's doing that to you.  Just as a workaround, since you have access to admin commands, are you able to use the give XP command to make your second character Lvl 89 also, so that you don't have to grind up a second character?

Edited by Pipinghot
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Yeah, Pipinghot...thanks for reminding me. I probably would have come to that eventually when the stress clears and thought is free again, but thanks. My thought was to use the in-game sliders to boost XP gain and then change them back eventually.  I actually like the early game grind, but needing the cryofridges in a new base that is actually my own means level 88.  Also, one reason I post my troubles here is to help "feel out" the problem so that if and when I do need to submit game suggestions or actually submit a ticket for aid, I actually know what I am talking about and what to ask for. 

So...not trying to be impatient, but I would like to play and make progress in a positive direction, much like I thought I was doing all last week, lol.  So, I am thinking of restarting on the map with my best stuff and using the game log-in screen options to clear the other maps. Maybe then i could transfer "clean". The thing is, if there is just a bug happening or something I can manipulate, I will feel real stupid ditching another weeks "work"...and that smoking 571 damage shotgun bp I just found. Just wish I new if this is what I need to do.

 

Maybe time for some SOTF, but I had issues with the adrenalin last time, lol.

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Ok...a test I guess. I have played on, but am not overly invested in The Center. I will try to erase that one and transfer there. Hopefully I can return to The Island like I just have if I spawn at level 1. Then I should know if the system is bugged or perhaps if my Lost Island map is wack. Valguero has not been opened, so I could try there first I guess and see what that does.

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12 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

Yeah, Pipinghot...thanks for reminding me. I probably would have come to that eventually when the stress clears and thought is free again, but thanks. My thought was to use the in-game sliders to boost XP gain and then change them back eventually.  I actually like the early game grind, but needing the cryofridges in a new base that is actually my own means level 88.  Also, one reason I post my troubles here is to help "feel out" the problem so that if and when I do need to submit game suggestions or actually submit a ticket for aid, I actually know what I am talking about and what to ask for. 

So...not trying to be impatient, but I would like to play and make progress in a positive direction, much like I thought I was doing all last week, lol.  So, I am thinking of restarting on the map with my best stuff and using the game log-in screen options to clear the other maps. Maybe then i could transfer "clean". The thing is, if there is just a bug happening or something I can manipulate, I will feel real stupid ditching another weeks "work"...and that smoking 571 damage shotgun bp I just found. Just wish I new if this is what I need to do.

 

Maybe time for some SOTF, but I had issues with the adrenalin last time, lol.

This doesn't solve your problem but single player on this game has always been... trash at best. It's just beyond bad.

If you can pop for the $13/month for your own hosted server, it's well worth it. It's really the only way to play. You have near total control of your map, character, everything.

And by that, I mean, you are still exposed to all the other damn bugs but at least you can recover really quickly.

Edited by Joebl0w13
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2 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

I do, and you can't.

You have zero access to the file system. 

Yikes, that's awful.

Serious question - why would anyone want one? It's hard to imagine why anyone would want a console that's windows, but worse. As far as I can tell, just about every game on the planet plays better on a PC than on a console, and for the few exceptions you can attach a controller to a PC anyway.

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1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

Yikes, that's awful.

Serious question - why would anyone want one? It's hard to imagine why anyone would want a console that's windows, but worse. As far as I can tell, just about every game on the planet plays better on a PC than on a console, and for the few exceptions you can attach a controller to a PC anyway.

Simple. It's like an iPhone, fridge or a toaster. For the most part, you turn it on and it just works. None of the component manufacture, misconfiguration, video card or driver issues, core dumps people post here all the time, all the time, so many dumps. 

That's not a console vs PC thing. Love em both. I use the PC for work, the console for fun.

Lots of games play better on the console than PC. You just never know which ones until you've already paid for it unfortunately.

 

Not Ark specific, well most modern games. The game breaking bugs hit the PC first, they usually get patched out before they make it to the console market. We appreciate that.

Edited by Joebl0w13
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When I got the PS4 and Xbox One S during a midlife crisis moment on Black Friday in 2019, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  I had an Xbox 360 that I got in 2017...my only console ever. It had been over a decade since I built a gaming pc. Prices were, like always, seemingly high for high end pc performance. 2 games that steered me in the direction of unrealistic expectations for modern consoles was Shadow of War on Xbox One S and Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4. Neither of those performed poorly on the consoles. I played World of Tanks and Portal...they both performed well. I revisited Halo...no issues. Then I tried Ark and it seemed fine at first. Then you actually start to acquire things and performance tanks. I had no clue any game could be sold so broken. None of that was ever an issue in my gaming history...ever. if you had issues, you had a gaming pc that was not designed well.  It was beyond the pale to think that games could be released and just not function. I had no clue. 

So my biggest issue in general now is that realizing how much time people invest in playing this game, and considering how it is prone to "break", perhaps a system or a few changes that allow people to recover...ON CONSOLE...would be a responsible choice.

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51 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

I had no clue any game could be sold so broken. None of that was ever an issue in my gaming history...ever. if you had issues, you had a gaming pc that was not designed well.  It was beyond the pale to think that games could be released and just not function. I had no clue.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with that.

* Every Battlefield game in the franchise... ever.

* A significant portion of EA's history as a company.

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-pc-game-launches/

It's really easy to forget how bad lots (and lots) of games were once they start working properly.

 

Or it's possible you've just been really lucky and haven't played any of the many terrible games that the industry has released over the years.

https://whatculture.com/gaming/10-blatantly-unfinished-video-games-that-were-released-anyway

https://www.gamepressure.com/editorials/broken-games-that-were-never-fixed-despite-promises/zb461

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-15-worst-pc-games-of-all-time/

 

The point is the industry is full of bad games, if you've been fortunate enough to avoid them then good on you, I envy you.

51 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

Then I tried Ark and it seemed fine at first. Then you actually start to acquire things and performance tanks.

I don't know if this will make you feel better, but that's largely true on PC also. If you don't spend some money for a pretty high-end PC you have to drop disable or reduce the various quality settings (sometimes by a whole lot) to make the game playable. The number of people who don't have to reduce settings in order to enjoy ARK are few.

I'm not defending WC, they're a bad company in plenty of ways, and I too have posted plenty of criticisms of them on these forums. The only point I'm making is there are a bunch of companies and a whole bunch of games that are just as bad as most of the bad things about WC & ARK.

51 minutes ago, Woody714 said:

Then you actually start to acquire things and performance tanks.

@Joebl0w13 and Woody - have either of you played Conan Exiles on any consoles? Since Conan is the game that has the most in common with ARK (that I can think of), I'm curious how console performance on Conan compares once you start building a big base and having lots of tames (thralls).

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