DEVS? Will performance remain the same in future?

[Jazz86]

Hello Wildcard,

many others and I are wondering whether the performance of the official PVE servers will remain the same in the future, or whether they are really working hard to improve it. 

The best example, remaining timer to hatch Carchar takes 4h. But with this performance it takes 8 hours. In other words, ❗everything❗ takes twice as long, which is why we are considering giving up Ark. Even the x3 events are no fun...

Please give us this information. We have been waiting a long time for a statement regarding the performance and now the air is slowly running out...

[Pipinghot]

59 minutes ago, Jazz86 said:

Please give us this information. We have been waiting a long time for a statement regarding the performance and now the air is slowly running out...

Considering they haven't made as much money from ASA as they had hoped (a lot, obviously, but still not as much as they had hoped based on a lot of their PR before the release) you should assume that official server performance will continue to be bad for the forseeable future, and probably always.

It's worth remembering that ASE has performance issues for the entire history of the game, this isn't something new.

Official don't generate revenue, they are essentially an advertising expense so that WildCard can say, "Hey look we have official servers", and like any company they try to keep their expenses as low as possible. It might get a little better, if they make enough money from console releases and from their next paid DLC, but it's never going to be better than ASE was and probably never as good as ASE.

[udo]

8 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Considering they haven't made as much money from ASA as they had hoped (a lot, obviously, but still not as much as they had hoped based on a lot of their PR before the release) you should assume that official server performance will continue to be bad for the forseeable future, and probably always.

It's worth remembering that ASE has performance issues for the entire history of the game, this isn't something new.

Official don't generate revenue, they are essentially an advertising expense so that WildCard can say, "Hey look we have official servers", and like any company they try to keep their expenses as low as possible. It might get a little better, if they make enough money from console releases and from their next paid DLC, but it's never going to be better than ASE was and probably never as good as ASE.

which ends up as chicken and egg scenario , bad servers = players complaining , other potential new players hear this and decide not to buy . therefore costing wildcard  money , 

 

lots play on unnoficial server yes , but there is a risk they will just vanish without notice , so official players feel safer in their time investment and these are the players more likely to spend money on dlc and other items and hang around longer, so it makes more sense for wildcard to ensure the official servers are running lag free and smooth .

 

[Jazz86]

Idk why they reduce the player count to 50 or 60... or whatever..

[udo]

41 minutes ago, Jazz86 said:

Idk why they reduce the player count to 50 or 60... or whatever..

wont mnake any difference server im on lag is there wether 20 plaYERS OR 60 

[arkark]

Unfortunately, I don't think anything will change in the future. And if it does it will be at the cost of losing functionality.

Apparently someone thought it would be a good idea to reuse ASE servers that are practically 8-10 years old, and besides, instead of putting three game servers for each physical machine what they have done is to put five for each physical machine. Something inconceivable knowing the antecedents of how bad ASE was in populated maps.

Obviously what they have is not enough, and I doubt very much that they are going to achieve a moderately acceptable performance during the whole life of ASA, unless they discover that there is a huge bug in the code that is weighing down the performance of the servers in a very significant way, which as I say I don't think is going to happen.

I think, totally unfounded opinion, but I think one of the next steps they will take will be to eliminate the issue that the dinos move with UE5 pathing system and activate some switch for the officials to work in the old mode that is probably less expensive, since the issue that in officials the dinos remain static for many seconds, is something that has been spoiling the experience since day one, and is possibly one of the points where the hardware of the officials is not suitable.

[Pipinghot]

10 hours ago, udo said:

which ends up as chicken and egg scenario , bad servers = players complaining , other potential new players hear this and decide not to buy . therefore costing wildcard  money , 

 

lots play on unnoficial server yes , but there is a risk they will just vanish without notice , so official players feel safer in their time investment and these are the players more likely to spend money on dlc and other items and hang around longer, so it makes more sense for wildcard to ensure the official servers are running lag free and smooth .

It seems like it should be that way, but somehow ARK has made around 2 billion dollars of total revenue (if you add up all of the different version - Steam, Windows, consoles, etc.) since it was first released. People have been complaining about server performance on official servers since Day 1, but it's still here. A game that has always been plagued by bugs, poor customer service bad performance on official servers, has somehow made the owners of WildCard & Snail a whole lot of money, more than most of us will ever see.

If poor server performance was truly a chicken & egg scenario then WC would have gone out of business a long time ago. The sad truth is that the official servers have always had terrible performance and yet the game has continued selling and making money.

[Wazzamaniac]

Others might not agree with me, but I would be in favor of making official servers a subscription based service if it would come with better hardware and performance, as well as better moderation services with the generated revenue.

This would also help against players who have abandoned the game years ago but log on once or twice a week to refresh their giga bases.

Again, this is if and only if server performance increases significantly because of it.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Wazzamaniac

[zero064]

1 hour ago, Wazzamaniac said:

Others might not agree with me, but I would be in favor of making official servers a subscription based service if it would come with better hardware and performance, as well as better moderation services with the generated revenue.

This would also help against players who have abandoned the game years ago but log on once or twice a week to refresh their giga bases.

Again, this is if and only if server performance increases significantly because of it.

That's not going to be a popular position, but I think you're right. One of the problems with Snail's business model is that users only pay once for the game (and a few more one-time payments if they buy expansion maps), and then Snail is on the hook for the costs of running the servers until it shuts them down.

Having said that, I don't think money will solve the present problems. The servers are running badly because of issues that are more technical than financial in nature. I suppose if Snail had more money it could've taken the time to test them properly before releasing the game, although I'm betting they'd have relied on real-world testing anyway.