As of now, are you planning on playing/buying ASA?

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, Fingle said:

The partnership with Nitrado is beyond me, I must be missing something.

WildCard was $1M behind in payments for the ASE Official server network, and Nitrado lent them an additional $4M, putting WC in debt to Nitrado for a total of $5m. This is why WC signed the exclusive contract with Nitrado.

There's more to the story, of course, like the revolving debt that Snail/WC are floating, but as it pertains specifically to Nitrado it's their $5M that explains the exclusive contract.

[Rashaka1]

Here is the sad part about the game....  This is going to be LONG.  Sorry no TLDR.

 

Let's just assume the launch was 100% A okay and there were zero bugs at all, which is honestly laughable atm but let's just pretend...

 

The fact that if you want to run your own server you either must A) Own your own server hardware and run it out of your home or other colocation, or B) You must run your server through Nitrado which is honestly the worst of all the complete trash servers hosts out there.

Here's a small list of the things I hate about Nitrado considering I've run servers since day 1 of EA for ASE.

-No ability to place warnings for your players that a scheduled maintenance is about to happen.  You get a built in 5 second warning and that is it.

-No ability to schedule a maintenance at an exact time.  You pick the hour that you want and you pick a 10 minute window in which their servers randomly choose a time in.  So if you pick 1-10 then your server will restart anywhere between x:01 and x:10.  So at best if you pick 9am for your server reset you need to tell everyone to log out roughly by 8:45 so they don't get screwed out of a server save..

-No ability to have the server perform a world save before shutting down.

-No ability to upload your own ini files.  They have an editor that you have to use and copy paste your info into it.  

-No ability to decide when your server updates.  Just because new server software was released doesn't mean you can update.  You MUST wait for Nitrado to decide to allow the update on their internal systems first.  That can take as many as 3-5 hours.  Until that happens you can not update your server to newer versions.  Since you can't control when Steam updates the client this means some updates will cause a server/client mismatch which makes it so you can't even log in to play and you have to wait as much as 5 hours to update the server so you can play again.  GG if you only have less than 5 hours to play on that day....

 

I could go on and on about the hot trash that is Nitrado and the BS of Wildcard forcing us to use this trash company because they wanted to make more money off the sales of server rentals....

 

Now let's move on to the game...

When you actually get into the game itself.  Many of the biggest things about ASE that we all loved were all the mods that existed and most of us were huge fans of Structures Plus mod.  Orionsun, the prick that he is, more from personal experience with him than the average player, has already stated that because he works for Wildcard now that he's just too busy to get his mod updated to work for ASA even at the most basic of levels.

Which means benefits of that mod that fixed Wildcard's failure to understand it's customer base won't be available in ASA until someone else makes it happen in a mod.  This means no stacking foundations which is one of the most used features in all of the mods in ASE.  Then you have all the quality of life stuff like glass structures that have the same health as metal in case you wanted a nice view for your base but you didn't want the wall to be 1 shot by a lone dilo...

No more pickup gun that has a zero wait delay to pick up structures, no more mass transfer materials omni tool.  No more pulling in resources or crafting items by pulling resources from nearby boxes.

 

No more mass storage outside of that aweful looking vault that you don't get until SUPER late into the game.  That's right, the metal box that everyone loved was part of S+.

 

This also means that you are limited to 75 slots in your crafting benches which means most of the mastercraft and ascended recipes are not able to be crafted because the crafting materials are so insanely high that you can't put that many of them into 75 slots which means it can't be crafted if it requires a smith bench to craft.

 

The weather inside the game is all over the place and unless you have insanely good gear and are willing to keep 2 sets of gear on you at all times it's basically impossible to survive some days due to the massive temperature spikes that can go as high as 55 degrees Celsius and as low as -20 degrees Celsius at the drop of a hat.

 

They also felt the need to remove the ability to improve you or your dino's movement speeds.  Granted you can turn this back on with an ini setting, but if you don't you may not realize that this makes NPC dinos harder to fight because they don't waste points in movement speed anymore which means all their other stats can be higher so more health and more attack power at the same levels as before.

 

Most of the ini settings we are used to don't work properly anymore.  Simple things like changing the crafting cost of items or simply removing certain types of dino spawns from your map because you find them annoying don't seem to work at all at the time of writing this.

 

The map is very barren.  There aren't anywhere near as many dinos as there use to be.  I also understand that you have to be in an area for a while before it will completely populate.  It's just not happening.

 

This is basically ASE with a coat of paint slapped on it and most of the stuff we loved stripped out of it.  I could honestly go on for hours about all the things I'm not enjoying about this game right now that don't have anything to do with the insane amount of crashing that I've been dealing with.  I just thought people would like to have an idea of what this game is going to look like once the crashes have stopped.... 

[Fingle]

24 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

WildCard was $1M behind in payments for the ASE Official server network, and Nitrado lent them an additional $4M, putting WC in debt to Nitrado for a total of $5m. This is why WC signed the exclusive contract with Nitrado.

There's more to the story, of course, like the revolving debt that Snail/WC are floating, but as it pertains specifically to Nitrado it's their $5M that explains the exclusive contract.

Right so short term gain but long term pain as I think this will make a significant number of players back off. I bet there are many people that play on servers of just 3 or 4 people that want to play with their own settings. 

Either that or if you are going to do an exclusive deal make sure that the environment is a fit for your product. 

However I do understand commercial necessities but should you really make you customers pay for your past bad decisions and if you do like I indicated what will the long term effects be. 

I already see a huge amount of bad press out there regarding this. That said, Nitrado refunded us quickly.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Fingle

[Fingle]

27 minutes ago, Rashaka1 said:

g.

 

This is basically ASE with a coat of paint slapped on it and most of the stuff we loved stripped out of it.  I could honestly go on for hours about all the things I'm not enjoying about this game right now that don't have anything to do with the insane amount of crashing that I've been dealing with.  I just thought people would like to have an idea of what this game is going to look like once the crashes have stopped.... 

I agree with everything in your post. ASA = fun removal that does look good .. when it works. 

But 

The best games are not winners because of the looks. 

I have a feeling all of this is done so that it works in Crossplay. The same happened in 7 days to Die.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Fingle

[TankinTBone]

its sadly a one of a kind game that has so much potential but under utilized, and with games being kind of crap in general its practically a dusty poop stained diamond. And it has really good replay ability so if u get used to just building up and getting wiped offline its good to pass the time hoping that one day it will reach close to its potential. 

[TankinTBone]

No offense to the company 

[TankinTBone]

so yes 

[TankinTBone]

no hate tho it seems like they r going into the right direction i think

[Olivar]

We've heard that before so many times...

[Pipinghot]

5 hours ago, Fingle said:

Right so short term gain but long term pain as I think this will make a significant number of players back off. I bet there are many people that play on servers of just 3 or 4 people that want to play with their own settings.

Yeah, agreed.

In no way do I think nor suggest that this was a good thing to have happen. Personally I think it's evidence that WC/Snail mismanaged their business to be in the position in the first place. If people see this arrangement as a good reason to be unhappy with WC/Snail then they'll get no argument from me.

5 hours ago, Fingle said:

However I do understand commercial necessities but should you really make you customers pay for your past bad decisions and if you do like I indicated what will the long term effects be.

Agreed, it shouldn't have been a commercial necessity in the first place. Of course I don't know all of the in's and out's of WC's business, but the results speak for themselves. When a company has to agree to onerous contracts because they've gotten into excessive debt, clearly they've done something wrong. ASA is essentially players crowd funding WC/Snails mismanagement of their business. I'm all in favor of people voting with their dollars, and sadly it looks like a lot of people are ok with being treated like an ATM by WC/Snail.

5 hours ago, Fingle said:

I already see a huge amount of bad press out there regarding this. That said, Nitrado refunded us quickly.

Glad to hear they responded to you appropriately.

[Luizza]

Playing. Enjoying it. Tbh it's so good all being on a fresh start with many more fresh starts to come that I would have prob paid the £34 just for that. Definitely worth it imo.

Yes, I was annoyed at times over the way all this has been handled, but you can't stay annoyed with what is just a game at the end of the day forever. Over the last few days as the unofficial server situation and even official servers have improved massively performance and bug wise I can see the final product in sight... and it's all gonna be ok.

It's a thorn in everyone's side that console players aren't with us yet but hopefully that will come soon. I really do feel for them, it must be frustrating beyond words.

I was around in the original EA and this is very similar with the ropey start (crazy bugs and crashes) and I hung in with it then too, maybe I'm just pretty laid back when it comes to these problems and I quite enjoy seeing the progress as things improve.

Great game, cheap at the price, don't buy if you have anger or impatience issues but I can see this running for another rollercoaster 8 years and I'll be along for the ride.

GG.

 

[DirkInSA]

What do I get for buying ASA? 
I get a (portion = 1 map) of game that I already own. 
I get fancy graphics. (maybe - if my machine is adequate)
I get wild baby dinos.
I get a QOL tame tracker.
At a price point equivalent to current full game releases I get a buggy early access version.
I get a bunch of the bugs present in the predecessor ASE that still manifest.
I get uncertainty about the sustainability of running my own servers. (sure it currently works - but for how long?)
I get the ability to cross play with other platforms.

What I don't get buying ASA? 
Something that goes beyond (from a user perspective - I don't care what the underlying engine is) the scope of what has in the past been a patch release of ASE.
A new and exciting experience that is waiting to be explored.
A polished product that is ready for release.

I don't care about cross play. I don't weigh fancy graphics very highly. I don't need to (again) be an "in the wild" tester for Wild Card - done that for many years now. 

I do care about novelty and new experience. And this is the killer for me. This is not a new game. I have played the bones of this game since 2016. I do not need to drive those bones with a new bit of paint over them again. And I do care about having control of how and where I can run a server.

So do I plan to buy ASA?

Hell NO!

[sjskdjkfa]

Unfortunately not at this time. For me was more a thing of shaky personal finances, at least initially. I could have finagled something, but just sat back with my metaphorical popcorn and thought to myself, I'm glad I don't have a pony in this show. Although I was kind of hoping my tribe would help me out with both my computer situation and also just buy the game for me. They may still do so, but with the rocky road at launch -they are less inclined -- I am still out. 

[yarnevk]

On 11/2/2023 at 4:39 AM, Fingle said:

Right so short term gain but long term pain as I think this will make a significant number of players back off. I bet there are many people that play on servers of just 3 or 4 people that want to play with their own settings. 

They only block ASA commercial server competitors, you can still use a generic server like AWS which would be fine for small coop servers.    It is the large megaservers that want a dedicated commercial ARK server support that are forced to Nitrado, but they are free to run their own uncommercial server especially now that WC got Nitrado to cave on the silly server DRM (which had required a steam license per map running!)  Nitrado tried to pass it off as a simple release mistake but they clearly planned to try to block server code entirely.

Edited November 3, 2023 by yarnevk

[jpinmo]

As being the elected Guinea Pig to try it out I would say NO NO NO, wait see if they can ever fix the Fatal Error bug before shelling out for it.  Been unable to play single or multi since Monday.  They also dont appear to be wanting to discuss or acknowledge the issue either.

[OldHead]

I was until now. Only because I have a playstation5 and a pc that wouldn't play ark.

Edited November 4, 2023 by OldHead

[NextGen1]

Nearly 5k hours and all dlc bought since 2017 on past gen. But NO I'm finally done with ARK after this latest bull with PS again getting shafted, I'm going to spend my money on a game that the developers actually care about there community. 

[OldHead]

8 hours ago, NextGen1 said:

Nearly 5k hours and all dlc bought since 2017 on past gen. But NO I'm finally done with ARK after this latest bull with PS again getting shafted, I'm going to spend my money on a game that the developers actually care about there community. 

Yeah, I feel you there! I have 10k plus hours played on official and small tribes. I pre ordered all the dlc maps for the playstation and THIS is how they repay us? 👀

[TheHatedConsolePlayer]

PlayStation 5 here. Thousands of hours on official. I added the funds to my wallet on initial release in October. Let down. Was logged in last night just in case they launched it, knowing it would be a release date. Actually did not think that they would only release on Xbox. Especially after the backlash for the steam release. I used my funds to purchase spiderman 2 last night. 

WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE? 

RIGHT HERE. 

[PhotekPlays]

server is rebooting every 20 minutes, unplayable...

 

same code = same bugs
 

behegate not blocking "enemy foundations", thats a 2016 bug

stamina stuttering with flyers argy and ptera if it runs out of stamina (still in ase)

range from argents, inventory not accessable (still in ase)

and so on...

 

that would lead to ATLAS, bc of the new building system and the forges bug were they burned forever not using resources, anyway...

 

it is not a better version, its not a new version so what is this...

 

and ASA is early access i know, think about it if you use this argument xd

 

you can add your unreal engine 5 version of the bug here (that was fixed or is still ongoing in ASE):

 

Edited November 4, 2023 by PhotekPlays

[Yggdrassil]

It's essentially the same game with an updated engine, however arks code is heavily modified from UE4 so large parts of the code are likely 'copy and paste'. It just is viable to rewrite all the code so therefore we end up with same code = same bugs. I'm still going to give them the benefit of the doubt because i'm hopeful a lot will be fixed, it may be wishful thinking but i feel the game is close, just need a few thing fixed before any additional content.

[wilhelmwebber]

I am postin g to support this (return of prices to Valve recommended ones in non-US stores). Sorry for the long post for the other users. This is geared more towards to Wildcard/Snail games than anything else. Hopefully this gets seen by some moderator and gets their attention. This matter really upset me.

 

The stealth price increase was bad. But even if they released with the current price, opting out of Valve's suggested price it is still a bad decision. Valve's suggested price exists for a reason: if you simply use exchange rate you are not taking into account particularities of those specific market.

I will use Brazil's example, since I am from Brazil. I am also in a particular privileged spot where I had the opportunity to live in the U.S. for some amount of time, hence I have insight in both markets and can say why their decision is bad with a bit more property. Suppose a worker is paid USD 5,000 dollars in the U.S. In the brazillian currency, this would be about 25,000 BRL. However, this is not what the same person working in Brazil would earn. It would be more likely around 8,000 BRL, which translates to about USD 1600 dollars. Of course, living costs end up being way smaller in Brazil as well. While one can rent a very good and spatious apartment with USD 500 in Brazil (~2500 BRL), in the U.S. it will be hard for you to even find something in this price range for renting.

The main point of the above is that if a company wants to be successful in a given market, the company needs to adapt their pricing to that market. Otherwise, they will simply not sell, or sell less than they could do otherwise. Valve having a lot of insight into the global gaming market is in a particular good position as to say what is the pricing in each region that will maximize profits. Now, I obviously have no access to sales numbersof ASA in a given market, but I would not be surprised if they eventually find out that, by not using Valve's recommended price, they end up losing revenue. Also, this upset people that feels discriminated just because they happen to live in a country which is not first world. You may criticize as much as you want, but this is how I feel right now.

Just to put matters into perspective. If I consider a US minimum wage of about 13 USD/hour, and a person working 22 days in the month by 8 hours, we get that the game costs about 2% of a minimum wage in the US. A similar calculation in Brazil put the game at more than 16% of the minimum wage. Brazilllians are used to pay more t things due to our weak currency and hefty taxes. But 8 times more is way out of line. That is the reason why Valve's recommended price exists.

And my example is just for Brazil, which albeit is bad, I recognize there are countries that are in even worse conditions and saw the price getting in even weirder prices. For example, Argentina saw the price jump by almost 6 times. In addition the whole things is being completelly inconsistent, with markets in South Asia and CIS region following Valve's recommended price (which are far below what would be charged, e.g. in Brazil).

Hence here is my plea to Wildcard/Snail Games. Adjust your global price structure to follow Valve's recommended game. Remember that while yes, you have the right to charge whatever you want for your game and be rewarded for the work it was done (and BTW, from the video reviews, I think it was a well done job), a game which is too expensive will just not get bought and you are just shooting yourself in the feet. I personally will not buy it while this does not get fixed.

Edited November 5, 2023 by wilhelmwebber
Editted to make the post clearer

[DinoFan]

I will not play ASA until the major bugs are worked out and unless I can host my own server on my own hardware here in my house.  I've read several threads since the release.  I'm a bit confused on whether hosting on personal server hardware is possible in ASA.  Please reply if you know.  I play on XBox and just played Official ASE.  But, I don't want to be at the mercy of WC shutting down serves again and have zero interest renting a 20 person server to play by myself.  SP ASE just sucks.  The maps are a ghost town.  If you need dinos, you have to constantly admin kill everything so the server will respawn them.  I assume ASA will be the same way.

[Noricha]

I’ll wait for cryopods and more maps before getting a ps5. Hopefully by then the major bugs and crashes everyone is complaining about will be fixed.

[Aldarku]

I bought it, tried to get attach to a server for a week and couldn't.  Tried to open a ticket concerning my issue but couldn't.  Had Steam refund me for this POS, now that I could do and did.