For the love of the game

[kurtnoko]

You can not communicate too much. Patches, events, issues, bugs, etc…..   you should pay streamers because your player base get 90% of game info from them while you ghost your community. 
 

Patch mesh holes. They are everywhere and cost players time and resources.  Throw a rock or STOP sign over them if you can’t figure it out. 
 

Patch servers during off peak hours.  Or schedule them well in advance.  Players lose time out of their lives and Dino’s (personally lost at least 5 tames and kibble) due to lack of planning. 
 

Prioritize improving the game and not adding Mickey Mouse. 
 

I don’t play PVP but ban cheaters.   Duping should be easy to identify.  No excuse that this is an issue 8 years later.  

After playing 8 years, you can assume your player base will not be fans of 2x event rates, that use to be 3x.

oh and did I mention to maybe communicate

[parazight]

36 minutes ago, kurtnoko said:

I don’t play PVP but ban cheaters.   Duping should be easy to identify.  No excuse that this is an issue 8 years later.  

People think that it should be easy to stop cheaters, 'hackers', and other bad actors.  It's not.  This problem goes Way, WAY beyond this game.  WC had to agree to a battleye contract to get their indie game on steam.  This puts accountability on BattleEye, the only option.  But even BattleEye is helpless. 

Cyber criminal activity has been holding billion dollar companies hostage.  The US government can only plead with these groups.  Even with the full resources of the US government, organizations have extreme difficulty keeping out bad actors.  Way beyond anything WildCard can do.   Do you expect studio wildcard to be able to take down both China and Russia?   YES!  You heard that right.  The entire continent!  These cheaters and criminals have been state sponsored well before ARK was ever a game.

Anyone who thinks that cheating can be mitigated without the use of AI software that detects cheating, a paid subscription model, or paid administration is absolutely fooling themselves.  Read a newspaper.

[TonyTempah]

Some credit should go to Cedric on Xitter who has been doing his best keeping the community informed but it has always felt like they could give the full story. He'll have a story to tell one day. I agree on the coms though and it can be done well, like Larian did and do. However, I think the one way comms is ok  but I feel like the player base wants to be heard at the moment. This when there are announcements that open with " We hear ya loud and clear!"... So if we want more comms but when we do get it, we still think the developers aren't listening there's only one option left, action. 

Listen to the base and prioritise the action to what is bothering them. It's an existing player base that loves the game and will be your strongest advocate to the market. Nobody said "I love Ark but I wish my character looked like a black and white cartoon character"... did they?

[parazight]

The people that help develop the Mickey Mouse stuff are not the same people who may ix bugs.  A team of people work on various assets congruently, this is why we have mickey mouse and bugs at the same time.  The company needs their employees to always be working and some of them don't know how to work on various aspects of bug fixing.  Additionally, you can't just heap more devs onto the pile to make problems go away.  This is every single MMO style steam game in the genre.

[Pipinghot]

On 2/14/2024 at 1:04 PM, parazight said:

The people that help develop the Mickey Mouse stuff are not the same people who may ix bugs.

The difference is no one ever asked for the Mickey Mouse stuff. Not one single player. Ever. Conversely, thousands of people have been asking them for years to focus more on improving the quality of their product.

The player base is not one big community, not all players want the same thing and no matter what WC works on there will be some people who are disappointed that WC didn't work on something else. In spite of all that, there was no reason to have any people "help develop the Mickey Mouse stuff", no one has ever asked for it. But lots of people have asked for lots of other things that could have been accomplished better than they are today if WC had used those people to work on things that need to be worked on more.

On 2/14/2024 at 1:04 PM, parazight said:

The people that help develop the Mickey Mouse stuff are not the same people who may ix bugs.

While your statements are true they are either deliberately misleading or completely miss the point.

In that case, don't hire the people to develop the mickey mouse stuff in the first place, instead hire more people who may fix bugs. Then suddenly the imaginary problem that you're describing disappears in a puff of logic. WC has never been trapped or forced into developing the mickey mouse stuff, there's nothing about it that was inevitable or unavoidable, it was a decision made by WC that had nothing to do with what their players wanted for the game (even when you take into account that different groups of players want different things).

On 2/14/2024 at 1:04 PM, parazight said:

The company needs their employees to always be working and some of them don't know how to work on various aspects of bug fixing.  Additionally, you can't just heap more devs onto the pile to make problems go away.  This is every single MMO style steam game in the genre.

And yet plenty of other games do a much better job of preventing and fixing bugs - because those companies prioritize bugs over pointless "content" that no one has ever asked for. Every game has to balance content vs. bugs/quality, and other companies do it better. No matter what excuses you make this simple fact will continue to be true. Better companies do a better job, period.

Edited February 17 by Pipinghot

[Legion85]

And dont forget the ongoing Crap Servers that Crash every Day at least twice. The rollbacks every Day. The new issues coming almost every week, introducing ryhnio not spawning as the newest feature 

Just a shame what WC is doing. They should Sell this ip and the 3 talented people to an actual Gaming Company 

[Hurebhsdyrgsg]

Pay streamers because 90% of people get info from them? Streamers already get paid assuming they've got a reasonable amount of viewers. Also I've never watched a single ark stream and have never gained any info from them. 

[yarnevk]

On 2/14/2024 at 6:15 PM, Pipinghot said:

The difference is no one ever asked for the Mickey Mouse stuff. Not one single player. Ever. Conversely, thousands of people have been asking them for years to focus more on improving the quality of their product.

Indeed people have been wanting an Primitive Plus ASA version, and the response has been they do not have time for full conversions as that has nothing to do with bug fixing and server crashing which is their priority.    Yet they have plenty of time to make a steamboat willie to demo a full conversion game engine.   Companies prioritize their resource allocation using contractors so at the top level all that matters is what their priority is for spending money on the game, so they are writing full conversion modules when they already said they was not going to do that - but instead of doing primitive that was wanted we got a cartoon conversion? They could absolutely hire more QA contractors. Instead they are working on their long term plan of making an ark a platform like fortnite for monetization.  Somebody needs to tell them Disney already invested in Epic not Snail, so stop chasing the comic cartoon money.

[ZombiejesusX]

They're setting it up so modders do their job for them and they still get the money. Unfortunately Wc can't develop their way out of a paper sack. All this time and bs talk and they still have the same issues from ase. All this new crap is polishing brass on the titanic, cause it's sinking.

 

I love and thank the modders for making the game awesome. You are keeping the game alive.

[Dave192]

It looks like they have adopted Bethesdas style of development.

Release a Minimal Viable Product and then let the community put the time, effort, and resources in to developing the good stuff. But go one step further and take a nice slice of money from the sales of someone else's work.

It's technically a brilliant business model, focused purely on maximising revenue with the lowest effort and overhead. Unfortunately for a game based on a storefront to work it needs customers, which Ark is haemorrhaging due to this chosen direction. Not only that, the loyal customers who remain need to actually buy the mods and DLC's further diluting the probability of this being a successful business choice in the end.

In time, this game will become a micro-transaction poop-show. I'm glad i departed now before my memories of Ark are totally tainted.

Edited February 18 by Dave192

[parazight]

On 2/14/2024 at 8:15 PM, Pipinghot said:

The difference is no one ever asked for the Mickey Mouse stuff. Not one single player. Ever. Conversely, thousands of people have been asking them for years to focus more on improving the quality of their product.

We've already established in previous threads that you have no appreciation for how the industry works.  This is a great example.  No one ever asked ARK to be made before it was made, either.

On 2/14/2024 at 8:15 PM, Pipinghot said:

While your statements are true they are either deliberately misleading or completely miss the point.

You miss the point.  People doing the 3d art stuff might be working on stuff that you personally don't like but that doesn't mean they're qualified to work on the net code or engine bugfixing, or whatever.  how is that misleading or missing the point.

 

You make all the same noob complaints.  The problems you whine about exist across the industry in all game companies like this.  Try to keep up with reality.

[Pipinghot]

17 hours ago, parazight said:

We've already established in previous threads that you have no appreciation for how the industry works.

The only thing we've established is that you don't understand how reasoning and critical thinking work.

17 hours ago, parazight said:

This is a great example.  No one ever asked ARK to be made before it was made, either.

Case in point... these are two completely different scenarios and the logic for these two scenarios is also completely different.

The difference between my argument and yours is that my argument is addressing a situation in which there is a large demand for one course of action vs. a different course of action that had no demand, whereas your argument addresses a situation in which someone is creating something new and novel and hoping that there's an audience for it.

Choosing to allocate resources between two different options is not at all the same as making something and hoping people will like it. That difference is so obvious it shouldn't need to be explained to you.

17 hours ago, parazight said:

You miss the point.  People doing the 3d art stuff might be working on stuff that you personally don't like but that doesn't mean they're qualified to work on the net code or engine bugfixing, or whatever.  how is that misleading or missing the point.

I'll explain how, again... since you didn't understand it the first time.

The point is that the supposed conflict between improving the game vs. adding the mickey mouse content is imaginary, it's an entirely fabricated conflict that only exists because WC caused it to exist by their bad decisions. If WC had simply chosen to hire people with the skill sets to work on bug fixes and better optimize the game there wouldn't be a conflict in the first place, because they would have allocated resources to executing on what their players want rather than something no one wanted.

The problem is not that the people who worked on "3d art stuff" can't be switched over to fixing bugs, the problem is that they hired the wrong people with the wrong skill sets to work on the wrong priorities. This isn't a skill set issue at all, it's a "we don't care what the players want" decision making issue.

What the vast majority of their players want is a better implementation of the game - a game that's much less buggy and optimized for better performance. Instead WC chose to work on an entirely different project and to hire people with different skill sets that couldn't do the jobs that players want done.

Any argument based on the idea that "they can't just shift people over to different jobs" is what is misleading or misses the point, that idea is a false argument from the start.

17 hours ago, parazight said:

The problems you whine about exist across the industry in all game companies like this.  Try to keep up with reality.

Nope, swing and a miss.

Plenty of other games do a much better job of preventing and fixing bugs - because those companies prioritize bugs over pointless "content" that no one has ever asked for. Every game has to balance content vs. bugs/quality, and other companies do it better. No matter what excuses you make this simple fact will continue to be true. Better companies do a better job, period."

 

And in case you still don't get it, or maybe you're just mad because you don't like the way I argue with you, scroll up just a little bit and read the post by @Dave192, you don't have any reason to be mad at him. If WC had made the right decisions, and hired the right people, they wouldn't be bleeding players by the day and getting vastly outsold by Palworld (and other recent games).

 

You can try argue all you want that I "have no appreciation for how the industry works", but the sales figures and daily player counts are shooting down your arguments without me saying a single word. You can argue with me all you want, but you can't argue with those facts. In your own words, "Try to keep up with reality."

Edited February 19 by Pipinghot

[kurtnoko]

In line with original post: Communicate

Last night we just had huge rollback (at least 14 hours).  A rollback of a full day during an event and US holiday.  Was there any official communication on reason, or how far rollback actually was?

might be time to just refresh decay timers until ASA is remotely stable. 

 

[TonyTempah]

2 hours ago, kurtnoko said:

In line with original post: Communicate

Last night we just had huge rollback (at least 14 hours).  A rollback of a full day during an event and US holiday.  Was there any official communication on reason, or how far rollback actually was?

might be time to just refresh decay timers until ASA is remotely stable. 

 

Remember Dollie (@NotDollie on Xitter)? This is the kind of thing she would post on X, usually with an explanation.

[kurtnoko]

Yeah, I remember the good ol’ days.  Even that shouldn’t have been her job, and least we got some news.  

[GeorgeNes]

I've noticed lately that the loot pool in our game has become cluttered with useless items that serve no real purpose other than taking up space. While I understand the need for variety in loot drops, it can be frustrating to invest time and effort into obtaining loot only to receive items that are essentially worthless.

[yarnevk]

On 2/18/2024 at 8:16 PM, parazight said:

You miss the point.  People doing the 3d art stuff might be working on stuff that you personally don't like but that doesn't mean they're qualified to work on the net code or engine bugfixing, or whatever.  how is that misleading or missing the point.

The 3D artists instead of doing mickey mouse that nobody wanted could have done primitive plus which not only is wanted was official servers in ASE.  So the one missing the point is you.   WC is making the money tradeoff of coders vs artists because it is obvious to anyone that they have prioritized unwanted features (on the assumption that paid DLC/mods will make money) over new bug fixes (on the assumption that vocal complainers are louder than the bugs).   Let all the artist contracts go and hire coders instead and get the code stable enough that the population and streamers come back and then start wanting more art.   The only resource that matters to the CEO is who do they hire with their money, more coders or more artists?   The mistaken assumption the CEO made was everyone in ASE would migrate to ASA, that it would sell even more than ASE did because of nextgen consoles, and that everyone is onboard with paid mods/DLC.   Their plan has failed so time to fire artists and hire coders using the money they have left after paying Nitrado.

Edited February 20 by yarnevk

[Dave192]

Regardless of what they do now its too late, the ship has sailed. This game will never do a 'no man sky' turnaround and become an enjoyable game.

The opportunity to capitalise on the UE5/Next-Gen hype has been squandered. Had they released an actual polished product then ASA could have been performing like Enshroud or Palworld. Instead we get an absolute bare-bones MVP with the intention to drip-feed content over 2 years believing this is enough to maintain engagement and well, the figures already show that is a piss-poor decision.

Im surprised they are staying dedicated to doing something with the game though. I had expected them to do a 'The Day Before' and just rug-pull once they had reached market saturation on their sales.

[parazight]

On 2/20/2024 at 12:19 PM, yarnevk said:

The 3D artists instead of doing mickey mouse that nobody wanted could have done primitive plus which not only is wanted was official servers in ASE.  So the one missing the point is you.   WC is making the money tradeoff of coders vs artists because it is obvious to anyone that they have prioritized unwanted features (on the assumption that paid DLC/mods will make money) over new bug fixes (on the assumption that vocal complainers are louder than the bugs).   Let all the artist contracts go and hire coders instead and get the code stable enough that the population and streamers come back and then start wanting more art.   The only resource that matters to the CEO is who do they hire with their money, more coders or more artists?   The mistaken assumption the CEO made was everyone in ASE would migrate to ASA, that it would sell even more than ASE did because of nextgen consoles, and that everyone is onboard with paid mods/DLC.   Their plan has failed so time to fire artists and hire coders using the money they have left after paying Nitrado.

Another armchair CEO.  It's rare that someone outside of a company has all of the information to properly evaluate the decisions, much less to this extent.

[parazight]

On 2/19/2024 at 2:59 PM, Pipinghot said:

And in case you still don't get it, or maybe you're just mad because you don't like the way I argue with you, scroll up just a little bit and read the post by @Dave192, you don't have any reason to be mad at him. If WC had made the right decisions, and hired the right people, they wouldn't be bleeding players by the day and getting vastly outsold by Palworld (and other recent games).

You don't understand how business actually works.  All of your dumb arguments exists on pretty much all forums of all games of this nature.

At the end of the day, WC isn't obligated to making good decisions or decisions that you like.  And you're not obligated to pay for their product.  If you think they're doing something illegal then report it to the proper authorities.

Edited March 1 by parazight

[TonyTempah]

8 hours ago, parazight said:

 All of your dumb arguments exists on pretty much all forums of all games of this nature.

So lots of customers arguing that the product makers are not prioritizing the features they want. If I was a developer, I would welcome this as free content development and feedback.

8 hours ago, parazight said:

At the end of the day, WC isn't obligated to making good decisions or decisions that you like.

Technically correct but, not a sound ethos to build a business on.

8 hours ago, parazight said:

And you're not obligated to pay for their product.  If you think they're doing something illegal then report it to the proper authorities.

If I was a developer, I'd rather customers complained than voted with their feet. A complaint I can do something about. Convincing a customer to come back is a lot of effort. 

and nobody is saying WC is doing anything illegal...

 

The title of this post is "For the love of the game" and OP has postulated that comms are poor and the direction of content development is not inline with the player base's desires. This is what we are discussing.

If you think that WC/Snail are making the right decisions and decisions you like, good for you. However, given that this dumb argument exists on pretty much all forums of all games of this nature, you might be in a minority. You're not obligated to agree with this opinion...

[Pipinghot]

20 hours ago, parazight said:

You don't understand how business actually works.

It's telling that you're incapable of addressing the discussion, incapable of offering any information or arguments of substance. Instead you just keep repeating your fanboi nonsense. If you could offer intelligent counter-arguments that's what you'd be doing, but you're not, because you don't have any.

20 hours ago, parazight said:

All of your dumb arguments exists on pretty much all forums of all games of this nature.

One assumes there are no mirrors in your house.

20 hours ago, parazight said:

At the end of the day, WC isn't obligated to making good decisions or decisions that you like.  And you're not obligated to pay for their product.

Agreed, thanks for accidentally supporting my arguments and showing why your own thinking is wrong.

No one is obligated to buy their products, which is why their ongoing series of bad decisions is hurting their business. If they don't care about their business then their bad decisions don't matter, but if they do care, if they feel an obligation to themselves and to their own business, then they're going to need to start making better decisions.

Again, the sales figures and daily player counts tell the story, those are facts that aren't about your opinions or my opinions. WC/Snail are doing a bad job and they are reaping the consequences of those bad decisions. It's not about you or about me as individuals, the fact that you felt the need to make a point about decisions 'that I like' shows that you're failing to understand this entire conversation. The problem is that they're making decisions that lots of people don't like, and those bad decisions are hurting their own business.

No matter how many times you try to make false accusations of people 'not understanding business' the results can't be argued with. WC/Snail are hurting their own business with their own decisions. Try to keep up with reality.

20 hours ago, parazight said:

If you think they're doing something illegal then report it to the proper authorities.

Swing and a miss.

No one has said anything about legal, illegal or breaking any laws. The fact that you tried such a desperate red herring shows that you either completely fail to understand the conversation or you know your arguments are bad but don't want to admit it.

Edited March 2 by Pipinghot