Wondering if a larger percentage of people moved to asa or quite or stayed on...

[sjskdjkfa]

ase and did the unofficial thing?

Did I overlook anything?

and if anyone can throw out some numbers where did you get them? and what are the consequences of the numbers? did wild card make enough money from the transition if a large percentage went to asa?

[zero064]

I couldn't go back to ASE now, after having the new features like the map and the build system improvements. Those who play on official might see it differently of course.

[Joebl0w13]

1 hour ago, sjskdjkfa said:

if anyone can throw out some numbers where did you get them?

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/2399830,346110#48h

More people are playing ASE.

[MMaas]

ARK used to be in the top 20 on Steam but ASA is falling out of the top 100 every now and then lately while ASE managed to stay in the top 50 most of the time.

[SunsetErosion]

15 hours ago, zero064 said:

I couldn't go back to ASE now, after having the new features like the map and the build system improvements. Those who play on official might see it differently of course.

I quited official. Even though I played official for about 99% of the time on ASE. It isnt playable. I can hardly connect. I play SP for now, but I think I will be tired of it some time soon  (Probably when my files get corrupted at some point with no decent possible recovery without a huge rollback to a previous save...)

[Legion85]

I am on official PVE in ASA and quite happy with the game. Would Never Play ASE again 

[NoobSupreme]

What, it’s perfectly playable. 100 ping without a serv crash in weeks on 9266

[NoobSupreme]

On 2/7/2024 at 9:50 AM, SunsetErosion said:

I quited official. Even though I played official for about 99% of the time on ASE. It isnt playable. I can hardly connect. I play SP for now, but I think I will be tired of it some time soon  (Probably when my files get corrupted at some point with no decent possible recovery without a huge rollback to a previous save...)

It’s ur pc not the servers. I’m running 100 ping without crashes in weeks on 9266

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, NoobSupreme said:

It’s ur pc not the servers. I’m running 100 ping without crashes in weeks on 9266

No, it's not.

If you pay attention to the forums and Discord lots of people have been having lots of problems with the servers, including plenty of streamers and youtubers with great computers. You've just gotten lucky. If you haven't had problems with the servers that's great, count your blessings, but lots of other people have.

[VillaNovan84]

Haven't been able to play the game locally and won't be forced to play on Nitrado after d-sat experience with Nitrado hosting Ark survival.  Since before Christmas. Play for several hours, log out log in everything resets to when I started to play hours before wiping all progress. I made building, crafting, taming, leveling.  Then there's the 1960's Batman show screen tilt that doesn't go away until you log out and back in and WHAM, WOW, POW... back to square one again.... Does Wildcard care or both to fix??? No, Dev team chooses to push political Disney theme and a mod that got nothing to do with ark and belongs on in a videogame arcade that costs a quarter and that's if you can install, find, or activate or choose the mods you choose to try and play... Wildcard has at least a playable game with Survival but ASA, save your money, time, and blood pressure by playing anything but...

 

 

[TonyTempah]

On 2/7/2024 at 1:42 AM, Joebl0w13 said:

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/2399830,346110#48h

More people are playing ASE.

To be pedantic, More Steam subscribers are playing ASE than ASA since Christmas. However, less Steam subscribers are playing ASE or ASA since the launch of ASA and the trend is downward. We don't get to see the same stats for console so it's possible that PC players have migrated to console and that the overall player base is static... or better... or worse. For an overall picture we are reliant on Snail Games' financial reporting. https://investor.snail.com/news-releases/news-release-details/snail-inc-reports-third-quarter-2023-financial-results. So around the time of launch of ASA, Daily Active User count for ASE was down a third, roughly 100k, for Q3. ASA was the top seller at time of launch and sales up to the end of October were 1.6 times what they expected. It's going to be the Q4 results that tell us what has happened. By the way, Snail share price dropped off a cliff in Dec '22 and suffered a slow decline overall. So if you believe that ASA has a future and that things will improve, now is the time to buy. This could be ARK's lowest point and we just about to enjoy a renaissance of evolutionary gameplay. Maybe. 

 

As someone with too many hours in ASE, I am enjoying ASA on balance. Pal World doesn't appeal to me and nothing else scratches the ARK Itch. 

[SunsetErosion]

21 hours ago, NoobSupreme said:

It’s ur pc not the servers. I’m running 100 ping without crashes in weeks on 9266

I know it partly is. Doesnt make my official-servers experience less frustrating. 
But its not only my pc. The official servers are laggy as Pego, and for whatever reasons I cant even properly connect. I get timeouts or something I dunno. I dont want to troubleshoot it because its probably an endless battle. The connecting issues, event gifts not working, AI stupidity, general lag, Inventory crashes, the list goes on...
I have decent internet and a decent PC, even though its weak compared to modern Pcs...
Yet I have significantly less problems running SP, the difference SP - Official is insane.

SP is enjoyable for me for now...

[Pipinghot]

3 hours ago, TonyTempah said:

To be pedantic, More Steam subscribers are playing ASE than ASA since Christmas. However, less Steam subscribers are playing ASE or ASA since the launch of ASA and the trend is downward. We don't get to see the same stats for console so it's possible that PC players have migrated to console and that the overall player base is static... or better... or worse.

Anything is possible, but if we're going to speculate we should speculate on the side of the most likely scenario. The possibility that large numbers of player have moved from steam to console is a very small one:

1a) ASA was released on Steam before console, so most people who own both items, a console and a PC-that's-good-enough-to-play-ARK would have bought ASA on Steam. Remarkably few people who own both of those items would have waited to play it on console.

1b) To be fair, the release of ASA on PC was pretty awful, more buggy than most people expected and with much worse performance on good machines at first than most people expected. Maybe, just maybe, a bunch of the people who got refunds on Steam turned around and bought the game on console, but that's a pretty big stretch.

There's nothing wrong with being pedantic, details matter and what you're saying is technically true, but that technical detail shouldn't make anyone think that there's some alternate narrative about the game that we haven't discovered, there's no compelling reason to believe that there's a different story than the Steam figures tell us. I mean, it could  be true but that's almost certainly wishful thinking. The most likely scenario is that the data from Steam demonstrates the overall pattern for the game on all platforms.

3 hours ago, TonyTempah said:

For an overall picture we are reliant on Snail Games' financial reporting. https://investor.snail.com/news-releases/news-release-details/snail-inc-reports-third-quarter-2023-financial-results.

Now it's my turn to be pedantic. That's not financial reporting, that's Snail's PR fluff piece where they try to put their own positive spin their financial reporting.

If we want to discuss financial reporting then it needs to be limited to just the Q3 financial report and information provided by independent analysts, not the marketing department at Snail. PF spin pieces are not where people should look if they're hoping to find an honest assessment of what's going on.

3 hours ago, TonyTempah said:

So around the time of launch of ASA, Daily Active User count for ASE was down a third, roughly 100k, for Q3.

Where are you getting 100k from? There were never 100k daily players for ARK in 2023.

 

Looking at the Steam chart using a 1 Year view, ASE had these daily daily player counts

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/346110,2399830#1y

Feb 27, 2023 = 75,697

Mar 27, 2023 = 73,447

Apr 24, 2023 = 69,526

May 29, 2023 = 70,615

Jun 25, 2023 = 72,446

Jul 31, 2023 = 66,034

Aug 28, 2023 = 61,055

Sep 25, 2023 = 75,908

Oct 30, 2023 = 65,068

Nov 27, 2023 = 45,768

Dec 25, 2023 = 39,891

No where in those numbers is there any place where 100k fits in. There weren't 100k playing on any given day and there certainly was never a place where a drop of a third would equal 100k, so where are you getting that number from?

3 hours ago, TonyTempah said:

ASA was the top seller at time of launch and sales up to the end of October were 1.6 times what they expected.

That's true, but it's old information and only covers 6 days, from launch on Oct 25 to Oct 31.

To quote their own fluff piece, "From initial launch through October 31, 2023, units sold surpassed expectation by 1.6x". One week of good sales is not the same thing as a game that's performing well. Everyone should pay attention to the fact that WC/Snail have not published any information about sales since this time. If the game was continuing to sell well they would be finding ways to brag about it all over the place, but ever since that press release from Nov 14, 2023 there hasn't been a peep out of them about how the game is selling. That silence alone tells a story.

  On Nov 14 they also said:

"To date, we have sold more than 600,000 units." but of course they didn't make any mention of the large number of refunds that people asked for. That sales figureis technically true but deliberately ignores the fact that it's a gross sales figure, not a net sales figure after refunds. And again, they haven't said a single word about sales figures since Nov 14, 2023. It's been 2 1/2 months with nothing but silence about sales performance.

In the meanwhile, Palworld had sold 8 million copies by Jan 27, 2024.

If ASA was continuing to see great sales figures and great revenue for WC/Snail they would absolutely be bragging about it, and yet... silence.

3 hours ago, TonyTempah said:

It's going to be the Q4 results that tell us what has happened.

That's true, it will be interesting to see when the Q5 results tell us, but it's just about guaranteed that it's not going to be as good as WC/Snail want people to think it will be. We don't know the facts until the facts are available, but looking at their communications (or rather their lack of communications) since Nov 14 the odds-on bet is that sales have been pretty lame since then.

3 hours ago, TonyTempah said:

By the way, Snail share price dropped off a cliff in Dec '22 and suffered a slow decline overall. So if you believe that ASA has a future and that things will improve, now is the time to buy.

That's awful advice, it's the sort of thing that pump-and-dump hucksters say. WC/Snail is not Gamestop, Snail's share price is not being pushed down by institutional investors or any other form of stock market skullduggery. I'm not suggesting that Snail is going to go out of business, and they might even turn things around, people can buy and sell whatever they want to.

But investing in a individual stock requires a lot more thought and knowledge than simply, "Hey their price is low, that sounds like a good time to buy," because it's also a really good time to potentially lose money on a floundering company. Unless you're a sophisticated investor that understands how to analyze a company, the idea of buying Snail stock right now isn't any better than playing craps or roulette, it's nothing more than gambling.

3 hours ago, TonyTempah said:

As someone with too many hours in ASE, I am enjoying ASA on balance. Pal World doesn't appeal to me and nothing else scratches the ARK Itch.

That's 100% fair, you should enjoy what you enjoy. In no way am I trying to suggest that you should be unhappy with ASA or that you should play another game.

But your personal enjoyment of a game has nothing at all to do with the OP's question, or with player counts, or with sales, or with the future success of the company.

[claytongold]

PVE on ASA. Dont have many issues except the servers. I think once there are more maps it will sort itself out.

[TonyTempah]

On 2/9/2024 at 6:53 PM, Pipinghot said:

All the stuff you said...

I think we are of like mind with the exception of my dubious financial advice (Although, when Snail and Wildcard do a "No Man's Sky" I will be vindicated :D). I appreciate you looking at my points and being objective, had I rewards to give, you'd get them. Re PR Fluff, is this similar to Magic Marketing powder?