Is this forum representative of the Ark player community?

[DirkInSA]

Over the last long while most of the posts here have been (understandably) about Wildcards statement of direction. To the point that the looooooong running "What did you do In Ark Today" thread has gone dead (actually I can't see that thread anymore - dunno where it went), with a very prominent poster there (from faulty? memory AllTheAllos) simply kicking in after MANY years of "diary" postings on his (hers?) doings.

I ain't sat and counted stuff - but it feels (subjective - don't shoot me) that most of the posts are negative. 

What is most striking is that I see guys popping up with like 3 posts over time - but they are registered (to the forum) in 2016! Now they shout! And that is very relevant - it is part of the title to this thread.

Personally, "I'm alright Jack", because I have a way forward to continue playing this game no matter what Wildcard does with it (yes @GP - even on windows 7 ) . However I may be "niche" here with some skills that ain't easily downloadable / acquired.

But to speak the title of the post, do you lot feel that the "muttering" and "OK I'm excited" that come out here is representative of the Ark community? (NO - I don't work for / contribute to / or have interest in either Wildcard or Snail ....). And more to the point do you lot feel that this ratio of {OK / Not OK} will translate to $ for wildcard (actually snail) ?

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by DirkInSA

[Pipinghot]

2 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

But to speak the title of the post, do you lot feel that the "muttering" and "OK I'm excited" that come out here is representative of the Ark community?

In the general sense, yes, the conversations here echoed in conversations that happen on the Steam forums, Reddit, game journalism and youtubers.

Is it representative in terms of being an accurate statistical sampling of how people will "vote" when they decide whether or not to spend more money on ARK products? I have no idea.

Lots of people are angry or dissatisfied with WC/Snail, is the percentage of dissatisfied posters here the same as the dissatisfied percentage of players in ARK overall? Couldn't tell you.

I think all viewpoints are reflected in the various conversations on these forums, but not necessarily in the same proportions or percentages that those viewpoints are held by the player base as a whole.

2 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

And more to the point do you lot feel that this ratio of {OK / Not OK} will translate to $ for wildcard (actually snail) ?

I hope this scam causes them significant financial harm, enough that they become a takeover target by some other company. But that's just one person's opinion.

The only way WC/Snail will get any more of my money is if they change course and charge $10-15 for ASA, it's not worth a penny more.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Pipinghot

[DirkInSA]

1 minute ago, Pipinghot said:

I hope this scan causes them significant financial harm, enough that they become a takeover target by some other company. But that's just one person's opinion

Clearly YES - for Ark & for Wildcard who have been naive  - but ITO game production (content A++++, functionality A-, support F) - better than a LOT of other offerings

[acat]

The forums have never been very representative for the playerbase of ark. At the very beginning it was probably much closer to it, but in the last couple of years there were almost no pvp players at all active on here, it was largely dominated by pve players. Now with the roadmap announcement that changed a little bit, but it was still far from representative i think.

Whether ASA will become a win or loss i dont know, hard to tell imo. But i hope it fails because snail games doesnt deserve any success with how they lead their company. If that means ark dies i can live with that as well, i stopped playing long ago because i dont like the content that they added over the last couple of years and the insane cheating made it pointless anyways. I just sometimes come back for a short time to enjoy the fresh start on a new dlc or conquest/classic. I originally hoped for ASA to fix all those issues but i realized that that hope is probably delusional. Especcially after snail games recently proved once more how bad of a company they are. It doesnt look like the important issues will get fixed for ASA, so i dont see a point in buying it so far and thus wouldnt mind it flopping.

Edited May 16, 2023 by acat

[DirkInSA]

2 minutes ago, acat said:

At the very beginning it was probably much closer to it, but in the last couple of years there were almost no pvp players at all active on here, it was largely dominated by pve players

Agreed!

 

[DirkInSA]

3 minutes ago, acat said:

But i hope it fails because snail games doesnt deserve any success with how they lead their company.

I think that Wildcard - despite their VERY poor business choices in the past deserve to go on. Whether that is in an ARK2 (which in my opinion the direction and target market was stipulated by shareholding - not by developers choice), or an Ark 1 remastered (also shareholding stipulation) , or even an Prehistoric Ark.

Ark is and remains revolutionary as a game concept. It takes concepts that was started with MoJang and Minecraft and made it utterly brilliant!

So yeah - Snail needs to go back to the woodwork they slimed out from - but the game and its concepts needs to go on. 

[DirkInSA]

28 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

Is it representative in terms of being an accurate statistical sampling of how people will "vote" when they decide whether or not to spend more money on ARK products? I have no idea.

That is the rub - along with how successful the "marketing" around ASA (shiny new product for NEW players) turns out to be ........

Edited May 16, 2023 by DirkInSA

[Pipinghot]

2 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

Clearly YES - for Ark & for Wildcard who have been naive  - but ITO game production (content A++++, functionality A-, support F) - better than a LOT of other offerings

I would argue that functionality deserves a D or F, but of course it's hard to agree on a grade for something that subjective.

The basic problem with ARK is that the concept is so good that it has been a machine the prints money in spite of being a terrible product with terrible customer support (not the fault of the actual devs or the customer support employees, btw, these are problems caused by management decisions). WC has never needed to become a better company, their product just keeps making money no matter how terrible the decisions are by their management team (I'm looking at you, Extinction map).

Compare that to Atlas, which completely failed to reproduce the success of ARK. In my view that's because Atlas fails to make people happy in the same way that ARK does, so with Atlas players actually care about the poor execution and poor customer support. WC still hasn't figured out that most of their success is because "dinosaurs are cool". In spite of the failure of Atlas they still don't understand that if Atlas had been their first game they probably wouldn't exist today.

ARK was so successful right from the very beginning that WC never had an incentive to improve the quality, it's such a cool game that people have been willing to throw money at them in spite of the many failings of the game. WC never needed to get better at fixing bugs, they made money anyway. WC never needed to get better at customer service, they made money anyway. Something about the concept behind ARK speaks to people so viscerally that lots and lots of folks are willing to overlook all of the terrible stuff and keep playing anyway.

Having said that, they made two absolute genius moves in the original concept:

1) Flexibility - no matter what flavor of ARK you want it's available - official, unofficial, private, single-player. You can customize the game to be whatever experience you want it to be.

2) Mod support - they wholeheartedly supported mods right from the very beginning (something many games fail to do) which also allows players to completely cusomize the game experience to their liking.

Those two decisions have allowed the game to overcome it's terrible execution and terrible customer support.

 

WC made some great decisions when first designing the game (dinosaurs, multiple game modes, mod support) and those decisions have allowed the game to flourish in spite of the fact their execution has always been bad.

[Joebl0w13]

4 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

What did you do In Ark Today" thread has gone dead (actually I can't see that thread anymore - dunno where it went), with

Alltheallos quit the game. Gave up refreshing bases that are about to get the plug pulled. 

[GrumpyBear]

I would say the users of this forum isn't representative of the entire spectrum of opinions.  People who don't like it very much to not at all most likely wouldn't ever bother to register to talk here.  Then there's a huge population of people who wouldn't even bother to look for a website like this.  Then there's the people addicted to asking reddit things google can answer better.  This forum has some good debate/thinkers, and we get more nuance out of conversions many times.

[Joebl0w13]

The forum flourishes when there is new content/news with the resulting information sharing/debate.

Or rampant bitching and moaning. Usually from new content/news 😂. You know how it goes, most people don’t log into places to say how great something is but they sure will to complain.

It’s been a long, fun ride. I wonder if they will keep the forums rolling after Ark 2. There’s some politics involved behind the newer modes of communication. Guess we’ll see.

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by Joebl0w13

[GP]

I'd say this forum isn't representative of the community because it's not as popular or used as much like it was years ago, even Discord is much more active than this forum. It's the way things go because forums like this are a slow dieing breed.

One thing I do note though is that when the waters are calm and there's no drama you always see the same old names posting on this forum but the moment there is drama like the roadmap, snail games, etc etc then you see a boost in new accounts or accounts that haven't posted since dinosaurs went extinct and suddenly people view the reaction from the community as being big, when in reality it isn't, at least not on the forums.

So yeah, it's not at all representative.

[Scheneighnay]

Forums are only representative of the most interested players. There's an FPS I used to play where I was very active on the forum, and any forum names recognized in game were regularly at the top of the leaderboard. Suffice to say your average player doesn't care enough to go on the forums.

I'm one of said people with like 3 posts since 2016 and I'm back to put my ear to the ground about Ark 2, and give my 2 cents.

[Griffin998]

On 5/16/2023 at 10:22 AM, DirkInSA said:

But to speak the title of the post, do you lot feel that the "muttering" and "OK I'm excited" that come out here is representative of the Ark community? (NO - I don't work for / contribute to / or have interest in either Wildcard or Snail ....). And more to the point do you lot feel that this ratio of {OK / Not OK} will translate to $ for wildcard (actually snail) ?

 

The opinions are definitely a great representation of the ARK community. Everyone feels either "Oh heck no-screw ASA and Snail games, I'm outta here" or "Yay! I don't care that it costs money, I'll buy it anyway!". Haven't seen a lot of in-between sort of people. 

[OneMajesticJerry]

On 5/18/2023 at 1:32 AM, Griffin998 said:

The opinions are definitely a great representation of the ARK community. Everyone feels either "Oh heck no-screw ASA and Snail games, I'm outta here" or "Yay! I don't care that it costs money, I'll buy it anyway!". Haven't seen a lot of in-between sort of people. 

For me personally, I'm one of those sat on the fence but I've only recently joined the forums after some grievance with official servers unrelated to the ASA release (to reiterate what GP posted regarding appearing during problems).

 

I really want to enjoy ASA but the way that they've been releasing any information has been a concern for timelines and not really left me that enthusiastic about it? I was sort of expecting some footage or in game shots by now given the release is supposedly a few months away. I'll wait for reviews to come in and probably approach it more objectively a few months after release.

I'd argue the forums are usually as previously stated just a small influx of new people with general problems or questions but the usual people posting. I know it's often the case on other forums such as DakkaDakka for warhammer at least.

Edited May 20, 2023 by OneMajesticJerry

[DirkInSA]

Yep - I must agree that it is generally only when there are "problems" when peeps post a lot!

 

4 hours ago, OneMajesticJerry said:

I'll wait for reviews to come in and probably approach it more objectively a few months after release.

To be cynical - that would be 3rd quarter 2024 then ???  

Edited May 20, 2023 by DirkInSA

[Luizza]

36 minutes ago, DirkInSA said:

To be cynical - that would be 3rd quarter 2024 then ???  

I'd say that would be optimistic for any map I would be interested in lol (I'm holding out for rag, fjordur or lost isles to be released, otherwise I just cba to start again).

And no, I don't think these forums are representative, I'd say these are mostly early players who fell in love with the game and have been along for the whole ride or newer players who are highly invested in the game. Familiarity grows contempt as well as love.

Newer or more casual players don't care as much.... why are they only newer players now? It really wasn't top of their wishlist of types of game they would like to play.  Joining this forum is a pain, you'll only go to the trouble of complaining or joining discussions here if you plan to stick around or you're sore 'cos the devs made it so difficult for you to stick with the game for various reasons.

 

[DirkInSA]

5 hours ago, Luizza said:

(I'm holding out for rag,

Dead right - I will no even think about it without Rag ..................... And even then it would depend a LOT on reviews and etc. - and I would be inclined to wait for a "free weekend" or even revert to other means of "try before you buy" .......

And also yeah - there is a lot of love & hate going on in the forum - as well as in Ark at large. I further guess in retrospect, asking the forum to rate it's own place in the larger community was a little foolish LOL

[Cowgirl]

IMO, more spammers here but less trolls. Though the spammer level has gone down a lot recently, the forums are more closely monitored than the servers, especially since there are less of them and reporting is in the same place and not a ton of steps, its like 3 steps.

[Joebl0w13]

28 minutes ago, Cowgirl said:

IMO, more spammers here but less trolls. Though the spammer level has gone down a lot recently, the forums are more closely monitored than the servers, especially since there are less of them and reporting is in the same place and not a ton of steps, its like 3 steps.

We flag most of the spammer posts and remove them before they are visible these days. It's much better than it used to be. 

[Cowgirl]

19 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

We flag most of the spammer posts and remove them before they are visible these days. It's much better than it used to be. 

Ahh that explains a lot! Thank you all for the dedication!

[Pipinghot]

21 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

We flag most of the spammer posts and remove them before they are visible these days. It's much better than it used to be. 

But... what if I want to improve my lovemaking potential by drinking 4 gallons of CBD oil per day, where will I go to find that information now?

[St1ckyBandit]

2 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

But... what if I want to improve my lovemaking potential by drinking 4 gallons of CBD oil per day, where will I go to find that information now?

Fear not, Joe has it bookmarked 

[Kinsky]

Ahora más que nunca se volvió relevante, yo cree esta cuenta y nunca comenté, pero quiero proponer una criatura para Ark y eso solo se logra a través de la interacción en este foro,  si no fuera por eso, ya he aparecido en varias publicaciones con 2 fan arts e incluso me han retwiteado en la cuenta oficial.

[troil]

This is my first post and I've been playing a long time. First with official to max then unofficial and chill. In answer to your question it human nature to complain 90 percent of people will leave or create accounts to complain when somthings wrong but rarely go out of their way to compliment sonthing that they see that's exceptional. It's the people that just leave that have wildcard worried.