Change your business strategy!

[acat]

With ASA you have put yourself into a position where you really have to deliver.
Give us a full list of changes you make for ASA and keep it updated. Get in touch with your players and collect feedback to that list. If you want ASA to become an „evergreen“, the „best Ark can be“, then you need the help of your community. Make use of that resource. There are a lot of changes needed - some bigger ones and lots of smaller ones. Many of which probably wouldnt even come to your mind because of how specific they are (or how bad your idea of balance is, sorry, had to add that part).

Also add a new place for ASA related suggestions. The old suggestions page is full of old stuff. Classify the suggestions in categories like ‘under consideration‘, ‘accepted‘, ‘rejected‘, so people know you have seen their idea and what you think of it. Comment on the suggestions. Get in touch, show passion, involve us in the process and earn back some of the trust you have lost.

 

Stop being so distanced and ignorant to your community. It seems like you just want to carry on with your business as usual, following the ‘stay quiet and wait out the storm‘ strategy. That is not only very frustrating for players, it also doesnt exactly help to believe any of your promises, seeing where your business as usual has taken this game (rampant cheating, extremely unbalanced, massive performance issues…).

Who would buy the remake for 60$ if it is plagued by the same issues ASE has had for so long now. Some new graphics and shiny toys dont cut it.

[Yggdrassil]

I would assume a full(ish) list of changes will be available before release but don't expect much until are close to confirmed release date. You are really reaching if you think this developer will ever stay in touch with its own playerbase, i completely agree with your post but i also have very little faith in the developer or publisher so we are likely to receive a slightly more polished yet bug ridden mess anywhere between august to november.

[EnemyOo]

dear ARK developers, why should we buy a new game that we already bought because you decided to update the game engine ???  

[EnemyOo]

5 minutes ago, EnemyOo said:

уважаемые разработчики ARK, зачем нам покупать новую игру, которую мы уже купили, потому что вы решили обновить движок игры???  

let those who received the Ark for free buy

Edited April 16, 2023 by EnemyOo

[Voidtoker]

Ark has ZERO competition. There is nothing like this game on the market. Perhaps some of you like utter trash like Grounded but until there is another game where I can take and breed animals like this they’ve got me. Could have even charged doubled what they are. They’d still have me.

 

Its a WASTELAND out there and I have asked for a refund for 90% of the games I’ve bought since Ark’s release.

 

It’s Fromsoft and Ark. Thats it. 

[Voidtoker]

1 hour ago, EnemyOo said:

dear ARK developers, why should we buy a new game that we already bought because you decided to update the game engine ???  

Because there is no alternative on the market. As such they can do whatever they’d like. You can certainly boycott but many won’t. 

[Hurebhsdyrgsg]

I played this game like it was going out of fashion(which it is by the way and has been doing so for several years now). Bit if I can quit this bug riddled broken excuse of a game that has so much potential but has NEVER delivered anything other than utter crud then so can any of u. 

We can all pretend our tribe is alpha or whatever excuse u have about years of breeding but so what? Who cares? It's a game. A very badly made game by the most incompetent development team ever. Wildcard have shown themselves to be inept at every opportunity yet everyone keeps playing and moaning. Well guess what? Ur the problem not them. U keep playing this awfully made rough attenpt at a half decent game. 

I've been ark free for over 6 months now and my days are so much more enjoyable now. No getting up in the middle of the night to feed imprint and do meat runs. And that's just raising babies. 

Basically what I'm saying is if u let them walk all over u then u can't complain when they do just that. If ur fed up with the game being broken then quit and if ur gonna keep playing no matter what terrible things wildcard do and say then stop complaining and enjoy ur broken game b4 they turn off the game and expect u to pay again to continue playing on a different server. 

I'll look in on the forums now and then to try and convince people to quit the game to help them with the mental health issues this game causes. The rest of u I hope u find a way out b4 u lose to much. 

[GrumpyBear]

50 minutes ago, Hurebhsdyrgsg said:

....A very badly made game by the most incompetent development team ever....

 

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call out a flaw in your logic here.  The most incompetent development team ever award goes to the original Dark and Light developers who sold the game to snail games.   While wildcard isn't a AAA producer, they aren't the most incompetent ever.

[findandseek]

18 hours ago, Voidtoker said:

Ark has ZERO competition. There is nothing like this game on the market. Perhaps some of you like utter trash like Grounded but until there is another game where I can take and breed animals like this they’ve got me. Could have even charged doubled what they are. They’d still have me.

 

Its a WASTELAND out there and I have asked for a refund for 90% of the games I’ve bought since Ark’s release.

 

It’s Fromsoft and Ark. Thats it. 

Just make sure you understand that with this mindset you have, you and people like you are a huge problem to any game's community.

[Noffek]

Could it really be useful to change the business model?  Maybe ARK1 would have a chance to survive?  Although in a few months they could release ASA without removing ARK1 and let's say $10. If you want to play ASA but you only have PVP mode available for now.  Or maybe take the PVP servers off the official site and put them on ASA, PVP players will be grateful for that.  And ARK1 PVE Mode players will be grateful to enjoy a game that has no competition in any way.  If they are to be shut down Official servers, we are left with Defacto Single or other not comfortable servers.  I will choose to buy another game, although only Single mode, but the theme is very similar and what's most interesting is that it comes out as a full version in a few days.

 

And I could have bought ASA with it, since you disregard us as players, I already disregard your games.

You won't even appoint a single person as your spokesperson to give you some information about the game.

 

[Pipinghot]

8 hours ago, findandseek said:

Just make sure you understand that with this mindset you have, you and people like you are a huge problem to any game's community.

I'm not fond of fanatical fanboi's either, but you do realize they're part of that "community" you're talking about, even if you wish they weren't.

The real takeaway here is that no game has "a community", every game has multiple communities and there are many disagreements among the different communities as to what they want.

[Voidtoker]

On 4/17/2023 at 12:01 AM, findandseek said:

Just make sure you understand that with this mindset you have, you and people like you are a huge problem to any game's community.

It’s my fault that I dislike 99% of what’s released? 
 

Furthermore, I couldn’t even comprehend CARING about this community. I should care about the dudes who wipe guys on the beach in their Manas? I should feel bad for those losers? 
 

Ya’ll should get some better jobs and stop crying so much.

[findandseek]

23 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

I'm not fond of fanatical fanboi's either, but you do realize they're part of that "community" you're talking about, even if you wish they weren't.

The real takeaway here is that no game has "a community", every game has multiple communities and there are many disagreements among the different communities as to what they want.

Well obviously they're in the community if I said that they cause issues in said community. Furthermore the reason I stated what I did, didn't have anything to do with "disagreements" among communities. They've shown they don't care about the quality of the product and will gulp down whatever is presented to them. There is not a single product that has benefitted quality-wise from the consumer base saying something along the lines of. "Oh just release something it doesn't matter if it's poop everybody will buy it anyway!" That sort of thing plays a huge role in why a lot of individuals start claiming that their favorite series, game, book, etc. Is a former shell of what it was. It's a big problem and that post was a good example of it.

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, findandseek said:

Well obviously they're in the community if I said that they cause issues in said community. Furthermore the reason I stated what I did, didn't have anything to do with "disagreements" among communities. They've shown they don't care about the quality of the product and will gulp down whatever is presented to them. There is not a single product that has benefitted quality-wise from the consumer base saying something along the lines of. "Oh just release something it doesn't matter if it's poop everybody will buy it anyway!" That sort of thing plays a huge role in why a lot of individuals start claiming that their favorite series, game, book, etc. Is a former shell of what it was. It's a big problem and that post was a good example of it.

Fair enough.

[Joebl0w13]

2 hours ago, Diabolos said:

Let's be real here for a moment. Ark, at the time of it's release, had triple A quality graphics. It had innovative, simple, yet very fun game play elements. It was online through hosted servers, and had no monthly cost. Then it was sold to a Chinese company after losing a lawsuit. DLC drops expanded content by adding a large amount of assets (3d models, FX, game play mechanics), and kept the community thriving.

 

I found the issue in the timeline.

[DirkInSA]

3 hours ago, Diabolos said:

Let's be real here for a moment. Ark, at the time of it's release, had triple A quality graphics. It had innovative, simple, yet very fun game play elements. It was online through hosted servers, and had no monthly cost. DLC drops expanded content by adding a large amount of assets (3d models, FX, game play mechanics), and kept the community thriving. Since 2015. 8 years.

There were no in game loot boxes to purchase. There was no in game shop. There was no buy a level 100 character. In today's age, where most companies focus more on milking their players opposed to providing enjoyable content, asking an OG company that has been steadfast in providing quality content for up front prices, to change their business model... I think you need to talk to someone. Yes, Ark has bugs. Yes things can be better. The grass is always greener on the other side. Players have logged thousands of hours for a reason though, so appreciate what you've had, and maybe consider that the company is doing what it can to both provide quality content while earning a profit (And not selling out to EA or something).

This !!!!!
I have been playing this game since 2016. Yeah the first bit I ran a "ripped" copy - just to try it out. But I liked the game - a lot - and bought the base game, and then bought Scorched when it came out. A loooong while later I bought into some "season pass" or some such that gave me all the other official DLC's. 

I really don't remember what the total cost of those 3 purchases was - but I have had 7 years worth of enjoyment out of the game! With tonnes of "free" stuff in the form of the unofficial DLC's like Rag and so on.

From where I am sat, I would be much happier with Ark as it stands simply running on has it has been: i.e. periodic releases of new "maps" with some innovation around the contents (building kit, dinos and etc.). Sure, these do not need to be free,  I don't believe any sane body would cry about paying for "development", especially after so much of good stuff over such a long period.

A new "release" however does not enthral me. Likely I will need to upgrade my PC for the new stuff to run anywhere like good. And I ain't buying anything NEW. Its the same old same old existing game - with extra pixels? and some dodgy "paid for" mod system (by all accounts a very invasive mod system to boot)? and cross play with console? None of those things motivate me at all.

Wildcard has in my view done very well - despite all the missed deadlines, and the persistent "bugs" that seem not to go away.

In other words, the proposed road map for Ark IS a change of business model. I just don't much fancy it is all.

[ItsCryogenic]

An integration such as overwatch 1 to overwatch 2 should be what wild card does rather than an entire new game. But overall it’s just a cash grab at the end of the day

 

[Pipinghot]

45 minutes ago, Diabolos said:

You're probably not understanding UE5 as much as you think with this line of thinking. What UE5 brings to the table isn't an "increase in graphics". It brings a heuristic method of processing information, allowing for much more complex scenes to be rendered at less resource cost. Out of the box, if they ported Ark over to UE5, there'd be minimal if any improvement in graphics or requirements.

To utilize these new features, WC would need to approach their art in a different way, doing away with limiting polygons/triangles, and focus on highly detailed meshes. This would improve the overall quality, and the increase in requirements would be minimal. This means if they did it right, they could render scenes that look EXTREMELY realistic, real time. It's like cinematic level graphics become the norm. Another step up in evolution.

What this means, is that WC can still have a variety of textures and settings, that will allow a game with much better visuals, to run at similar or less requirements. Think of it this way, Maybe you'll have a bit less foliage to look at, and maybe the lighting won't be godrays everywhere... But you'll still have a better experience WITHOUT needing an upgrade.

By better I mean, maybe better looking stuff, but also bases load faster. Servers are more stable. Structure/tame limits being removed or increased greatly. Better animations (no more running forward while your waste is angled at 90 degrees to the side!). Better IK (No more hovering feet). Better AI (No more dinos stuck in a corner, which means better trap innovation?). ETC ETC.

What WC is doing with ARK... is basically trying to do it all over again with a successful title. Sooner or later you're gonna upgrade your PC, and tbh, 3090's are in the budget bin these days, and a 3090 is all you really need with UE5 (Not to just run it. But run it at high/epic settings across the board). Sure maybe in 3 years, 8k will be the norm, and texture sizes will be insane, but you can still run on reduced settings and get a damn nice looking experience.

That's the theory, but reality has shown it to be untrue. Take a look around at other games that have tried upgrading or building a new game in UE5, the simple truth is that it's not working as advertised. You talk about someone else not understanding UE5 as much as they think, but your understanding seems to be based on Epic's marketing rather than what's actually happening when people use it. There's basically no real-world scenario in which UE5 is living up to the hype.

UE5 is capable of truly beautiful rendering, that much is true, but any claims of being more efficient for computers, bases loading faster, servers being more stable, etc. are looking quite overblown. Don't believe marketing hype.

45 minutes ago, Diabolos said:

What WC is doing with ARK... is basically trying to do it all over again with a successful title.

Except they're not doing "it all over again". They're attempting to copy/paste ARK from UE4 to UE5 and then charging people as if it's a whole new game. They're trying to charge twice for the same content. Tons of games do in-place upgrades for free, pushing out technology upgrades for free is the norm, and WC is violating that norm in a big way. This is a scam, plain and simple, and if people fall for that scam then shame on them.

45 minutes ago, Diabolos said:

When Ark ownership changed hands, let's be honest. Snail games put a lot of money into it, expanding the universe immensely.

Nope. Those expansions were already the roadmap for how WildCard intended to expand ARK over time.

It's true that Snail Games paid a bunch of money for WildCard, but that's because WildCard was desperate for money because they had to settle a $40M lawsuit for their scummy business practices. But Snail is not responsible for WildCard putting out multiple free DLC's, that was a decision WildCard made for the game before they lost their lawsuit and had to be bought out.

45 minutes ago, Diabolos said:

When wyverns came out, they were a Scorched Earth exclusive, but then Ragnarok came out as a free DLC and everyone could have them.

Yup. Which, again, was part of WC's plan before they were bought out. Snail doesn't get credit for this.

45 minutes ago, Diabolos said:

You want to tell this company to change their business model? What do you wanna see? Something like Fortnight? COD? Tree of Savior? Black Desert Online? Pay to win online?

We could debate business models all day, but there's absolutely no doubt that they're doing something wrong, the proof is in the pudding. Behind the scenes, in boardrooms and executive meetings that we know nothing about, they're mismanaging their company and the results are obvious in their financial statements. In spite of their attempts to spin things in a positive light the investor class knows how to read their financials, and things are not looking good.

The current situation is caused by Snail/WildCard being desperate for money, and trying to use the UE5 upgrade as a cash grab. Anyone who supports it is rewarding them for their grift.

 

 

 

  

 

 

[Joebl0w13]

Could be Ark, could also just be there's some trading shenanigans going on:

https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Snail+(SNAL)+Engages+Shareintel+to+Investigate+Abusive+and+Illegal+Naked+Short+Selling+Activity/21392576.html

Impossible to tell really.

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Joebl0w13

[Pipinghot]

30 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Could be Ark, could also just be there's some trading shenanigans going on:

https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Snail+(SNAL)+Engages+Shareintel+to+Investigate+Abusive+and+Illegal+Naked+Short+Selling+Activity/21392576.html

Impossible to tell really.

That's a fair point, but let's be clear that these two propositions do not have equal weight.

"Snail Games is poorly managing their company resulting in falling share prices" is not equally likely when compared to "Snail Games is the victim of naked short selling."

The most likely scenario is that Snail is using this accusation as a game of smoke & mirrors to distract people from their financial woes. While both of these scenarios are possible, it is so much more likely that the problem lies within Snail games themselves. Since the regulatory changes in 2008 that sought to rein in naked short selling there have been a bunch of companies in financial trouble that have cried "Naked short selling!" then it turned out that these accusations were pure fabrications. Naked short selling still exists, and it's illegal, but it happens less than companies-who-are-in-trouble claim it does.

It's the financial equivalent of vaporware. Instead of promising software they never create (which, let's be honest, is a pretty good description of ARK2, so we already know that WC/Snail are big on false promises), a company "promises" that they're the victim of naked short selling. They're hoping that they can make enough money to work things out until the false-hype that they have created dies down. In this case of false claims of naked short selling they're hoping to convince investors (and players) that their business fundamentals are solid and that they're a good investment, hoping that they can fix their business problems before the "investigation" is completed.

Even without waiting for the investigation to be completed is that the daily trading volume on Snail has been consistently declining over time, that's not a good indicator of naked short selling.

Nov 2022 - IPO - 24M shares traded, market cap $72M (obviously a high volume of trading at IPO, when every share in the company is traded immediately, sometimes multiple times in a single day).

Dec 2022 - 516k shares traded, market cap $61.68M

Jan 2023 - 211k shares traded, market cap $36.24M

Feb 2023 - 532k shares traded, market cap $40.8M

Mar 2023 - 70k shares traded, market cap $38.4M

Apr 2023 - 50k shares traded, market cap $26.64M

Now obviously those are just a few sample days out of the 170 days since the IPO, but if you look at the daily & weekly figures for Snail, they are a pretty darned good reflection of the overall trends. Since the beginning of March the daily trading volumes have been hovering around 100k per day, that is not a trading volume that should immediately make anyone suspect that naked short selling is causing a problem.

 

Mind you, it might be the case that there has been a lot of legitimate short selling taking place since March. That is, after all, something that starts to happen when a company discloses financials that make investors uncomfortable. There's nothing legally or morally wrong with short selling, as long as is follows legally required practices, and for all I know a good portion of the trading volume since March has involved shorting the stock, but the idea that naked short selling, the non-legal kind of shorting, has been causing problems for their stock price looks more like an attempt by Snail to wave their hands and blame "bad guys who we don't know who they are" than like any sort of real scenario.

Of course I could be wrong, Snail might be one of those unusual companies that has weak fundamentals and is also the victim of naked short selling, but based on their history of lack-of-honesty and how this has played out with other companies in their position, I doubt it's true.

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Could be Ark, could also just be there's some trading shenanigans going on:

While we're on the topic, I wouldn't say that "it's ARK", ARK is not to blame for Snail's problems. ARK as a game is pretty normal in the gaming world, it has up's and down's in sales and profitability and it's nearing the end of its life. It's possible that WildCard could keep it going for some years with a continuing series of paid DLC's, but it's pretty clear that the game is becoming less profitable over time in spite of multiple DLC's. When you look at how many copies of the base game they've given away for free in the past couple of years, combined with the reduction in price over time of the DLC's, it's seems almost certain that each new paid DLC is benefiting the company less and less (diminishing returns). Even if each new DLC makes the same amount of gross revenue as the previous DLC's their fixed costs for running servers are increasing over time, so that's still a loss in net profitability over time.

So while ARK is an aging game it's not the real problem. The real problem is Snail, because they have a weak portfolio. ARK is 90% of Snail, ARK is 90% of Snail's revenues and profitability. Snail has other games but all of those games put together are only 10% of the companies revenue & profitability.

Side note: in case this needs to be said, obviously revenue & profitability are not the same thing, no need to call me out on that. A product can have lots of revenue and low profitability or low revenue and high profitability. I'm not trying to suggest that revenue & profits are exactly the same thing, but for the purposes of this discussion they might as well be. ARK is the one product that keeps Snail games going, if they tried to run the company with all of their other games put together they might be a profitable company, but they'd only be one-tenth the size of the company they are now. I'm pretty sure Snail would never have been able to go public without ARK, and if they sold/lost ARK today they'd be de-listed, the rest of their portfolio put together is not enough to keep them on any major stock exchange.

So, when a company has a single product that is responsible for 90% of the company's profitability the company simply cannot afford for that one product to have a normal business cycle, they can't afford for revenues/profits from ARK to drop for too long because the rest of their portfolio simply can't keep the company going. They are forced to try to milk ARK for all it's worth every day of the week, every week of the year, it has to have sustained revenues at all times - and that is an Achilles' heel for company. A company that relies on a single product is always vulnerable, even if the product is quite popular. Single-product companies have a looong history of going out of business or being bought by companies that have a more robust portfolio.

[DirkInSA]

9 hours ago, Diabolos said:

Out of the box, if they ported Ark over to UE5, there'd be minimal if any improvement in graphics or requirements.

That is the crux. Sure it is possible the UE5 does all the fancy stuff without hurting hardware too badly. But as @Pipinghot sez, to date nobody (except a "demo" released directly from Epic) has been able to actually do it and release it in the wild.

And in all events, the chance of Wildcard doing the hard yards of actually reengineering Ark I to be able to use all the fancy stuff in UE5 is ZERO. Why because the "work" involved in re-working an existing code base is vastly more complex than the "work" to do a complete rewrite from scratch. But no one in the corporate world will ever buy those numbers. The bean counters cannot see past "cash cow" and "sunk cost". Especially in a structure like this setup where Ark is kinda the only trick that the pony can do. So wildcard will be pressured / forced into doing a quick and dirty application of lipstick on the pig. i.e. a cut and paste and call it done.

To follow that through - the game will be effectively presenting the existing polygons (imported to UE5) through an engine that ain't designed to do that (although it will do that as the engine provides backward compatibility). This is kinda like running Windows for workgroups in a VM on a modern 64bit machine so that an ancient copy of Baldur's Gate will run.

Ark is HUGE. I cannot guess how much of the GigaBytes comprises graphic "assets" and how much of that is the real code or script to drive those assets. The point is that to really benefit from implementing UE5, one would likely have to rework 99% of those bits of code and a whole bunch of the graphic assets from the ground up. As a trivial example of the "scope" involved here, whenever Wildcard releases a patch to a (single) creature, ALL of the dino assets are shipped in the patch. So to adapt to UE5 each and every one of those assets will need touching to correctly inherit the "base" that changes with the introduction of UE5. Just in terms of code - never mind graphic stuff, that is daunting.

[DirkInSA]

5 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

ARK as a game is pretty normal in the gaming world, it has up's and down's in sales and profitability and it's nearing the end of its life. It's possible that WildCard could keep it going for some years with a continuing series of paid DLC's, but it's pretty clear that the game is becoming less profitable over time in spite of multiple DLC's.

Agreed - but that is the exact definition of "cash cow". The hard yards have been done. The product is out there and has certainly paid for itself. Many times over. Running costs (compared to development costs) are trivial. The "cost" of running a bunch of servers for official is really really nothing in the big scheme of what profit has accrued from the game. And the official servers are excellent advertising (costing around the same as an advertising exec LOL). Releasing new DLC's (which are often just a copy of some guys existing mod) is a good way to keep the $'s coming in. Sure nothing like when the initial game was top of the pops and millions of people bought it, but for sure enough to keep the dudes working on Ark 2 in coffee and cigarettes.

The normal course of events would be Ark 2 after a while. That built and enhanced on Ark 1. Not Ark 2 that went utterly left field in terms of the game mechanic and vision around what Ark is. (Although I guess that's guess work - because we got no clue what Ark 2 actually is )

[Larkfields]

36 minutes ago, Diabolos said:

Not true. Fortnight uses UE5.

EPIC owns both Fortnite and Unreal, so they need to show that Unreal 5 is a capable engine.

[Pipinghot]

10 hours ago, Diabolos said:

Not true. Fortnight uses UE5.

They "use" UE5 but it's not clear how much, even now, has been natively created (or natively re-created) under UE5.

First, they successfully ported Fortnite to UE5, which entails more work than they want to admit. It's not hard to find dev blogs (both written and video) from other games explaining that it's harder than Epic says it is. Mind you, it's not surprising that it's harder than they say, most IT projects (heck, most projects in life) are harder than they seem like they're going to be. So while everyone assumed it would be harder than Epic said it would be, it has turned out to be even harder than that higher estimate. But regardless of how hard or easy it was, the point is while Fortnite currently use UE5 much of the game even now is imported UE4 content. Since then, they have been updating/re-writing/recreating bits and pieces of it in UE5 and, of course, new stuff is being developed natively in UE5, but no one other than Epic knows how much is really UE5 content.

That's not a criticism, it's just important to understand that even Fortnite, a game created by Epic, the same people that created and own UE5, still have not completely converted their game completely to UE5. To put that in terms that are easier for people to understand, it's like running an old 32-bit program on your new 64-bit Windows 10/11 computer. It runs, it runs under a 64-bit operating system, but it's still using the original code written for a 32-bit world. That's not at all the same as re-writing or re-developing the program at a 64-bit program.

So yes, it used UE5 but it's not wholly "a UE5 game". Likewise, ASE will absolutely not be "a UE5 game". It will be a UE4 game running in a UE5 environment, that's not the same thing.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Pipinghot