I am Jack's Disappointment

[Pipinghot]

15 hours ago, Zeldei said:

ASA was always advertised as just ark with a graphical, UI, and QOL update.

Not true. They have also said at various points that ASA is "new", making claims about lots of brand new code, all of which were obviously false. Doug Kennedy even posted it on Twitter/X at least one time.

WC has made quite a few false claims about ASA, they have not been honest about what has actually been done with the product.

15 hours ago, Zeldei said:

Being surprised that it is, in fact, what it was advertised to be is a strange complaint. That is like buying flavored bottled water and complaining it's just water with flavoring. 

Except that's not what @WCpromoteslaziness did. What he did was make fun of people who are buying used water and believing that it was new.

He didn't buy it and then complain, he made fun of people who bought it.

15 hours ago, Zeldei said:

Nothing wrong with paid DLC.

There is when a game is still in Early Access.

There is no governing body that makes rules about Early Access, which is all the more reason that players/customers should criticize companies who do it. It's entirely unethical, scummy and generally just a crappy way to treat customers.

Beyond that, ASA should never have been EA to begin with, that was also unethical and scummy, unfortunately Steam and the other platforms are find with unethical, scummy behavior as long as they get a cut.

15 hours ago, Zeldei said:

Workers don't work for free and businesses aren't a charity. They need to show a profit.

WC/Snail have made around 2 billion dollars (that's with a "B", Billion) on the ARK properties over the years, much more than enough money to make a better product and have plenty of operating revenue for anything they wanted to do. This is blatant profiteering at the expense of customers. If you want to overspend for a substandard that's your choice, but then you need to understand that other people have every right to criticize people who mismanage their own company and then need to crowd-source an inferior upgrade thinly disguised as a "new" game.

Companies do need to show a profit, and people also have the right to criticize them for mismanaging their company and their products.

[Zeldei]

8 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Not true. They have also said at various points that ASA is "new", making claims about lots of brand new code, all of which were obviously false. Doug Kennedy even posted it on Twitter/X at least one time.

WC has made quite a few false claims about ASA, they have not been honest about what has actually been done with the product.

Except that's not what @WCpromoteslaziness did. What he did was make fun of people who are buying used water and believing that it was new.

He didn't buy it and then complain, he made fun of people who bought it.

There is when a game is still in Early Access.

There is no governing body that makes rules about Early Access, which is all the more reason that players/customers should criticize companies who do it. It's entirely unethical, scummy and generally just a crappy way to treat customers.

Beyond that, ASA should never have been EA to begin with, that was also unethical and scummy, unfortunately Steam and the other platforms are find with unethical, scummy behavior as long as they get a cut.

WC/Snail have made around 2 billion dollars (that's with a "B", Billion) on the ARK properties over the years, much more than enough money to make a better product and have plenty of operating revenue for anything they wanted to do. This is blatant profiteering at the expense of customers. If you want to overspend for a substandard that's your choice, but then you need to understand that other people have every right to criticize people who mismanage their own company and then need to crowd-source an inferior upgrade thinly disguised as a "new" game.

Companies do need to show a profit, and people also have the right to criticize them for mismanaging their company and their products.

You misunderstood.  I didn't criticize people making fun of people who thought it would be new. I am criticizing people who complained it wasn't new when it was obvious it was going to be ARK 1, but in unreal 5. It's a no duh kind of thing.  They literally advertised it as such. 

You are confusing the claim that they rebuilt the game from scratch and the game being different. I was not addressing the former, but people who complain about the latter. 

It was billed as a remaster of the old maps into a new engine that would eventually serve as the platform of continued ARK 1 style content.  You reinforce my point. Buying old water and expecting new water is dumb. 

I just watched a Neddy the Noodle video where he moans about how Scorched Earth is the same map and not some brand new map with a tek cave and more bosses. That's not the point of the UE5 update...

Being in early access is largely irrelevant.   You already paid money for an early access product, so paying more money for additional content beyond the scope of what you bought is no different. It would only be an ethical issue if they use coercion of some kind to force you to buy it or if they cut promised content you paid for after the fact, only to reintroduce it as paid DLC. 

Nothing wrong with paid DLC to inject money into the system, whether early access or not. People don't work for free. Work costs manhours.  As long as content gets delivered and you get what you bought, it is fine.  If you don't like it or want it...don't buy it.  It's really simple. If you do like it, buy it.  

So far, they have been delivering on what content they said they were going to release. And more.

How much money snail makes is immaterial to whether you can charge for content.  No company is going to just give you all additions for the future for free because you bought the base game. Be lucky wildcard isn't Funcom where they charge 20.00 for a pillow you can't sit on. 

 

 

Edited April 12 by Zeldei

[Zeldei]

15 hours ago, Scheneighnay said:

Atlas is from the same publisher, and it's the publisher making the poor financial decisions that got us here to begin with.

I was really excited for Bellwright until I noticed it's also published by Snail, so it's going to be put into maintenance mode the instant it launches, just like Atlas.

I said Atlas was not made by Wildcard. That's a true statement. Having the same publishing is a different thing. 

[Zeldei]

9 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

While that's technically true it misses the point that you're replying too.

1) Atlas was created from the ARK codebase & game engine, which was created by WC.

2) Atlas is owned and published by Snail, but Snail & WC are really one company. On paper they're two different entities but in reality they're one company. No matter what they say on paper, the truth is that WC = Snail.

3) Atlas was heavily cross-promoted by WildCard when it was new. For a long time many people believed it was a WC game, which is why they played it in the first place.

4) No matter who owns which game, and no matter who owns which company, his point is still true.

"The treasure map system was taken from Atlas" - that's a true statement regardless of whether Atlas is a WC product or not.

I don't disagree that Atlas was an asset flip of ark.  It was also made by snail, the publisher. The point being made is that it's not the ark devs.  This is like saying because Blizzard publishes both WoW and Overwatch, you can point to issues in WoW's development team explaining issues with Overwatch. 

Just because Atlas was abandoned and never went anywhere doesn't mean the ark devs are responsible for that.  That is on grapeshot and snail's executive decisions. 

The post implied that the people designing ASA were the ones who were responsible for Atlas being a failure. They aren't. Ark, and its dev team, have largely been successful. 

Edited April 12 by Zeldei

[Zeldei]

19 hours ago, St1ckyBandit said:

Then why not just sell the SE BTT for 10 bucks. Why package it with content for maps that in all likelihood wont be coming until 2025. It's a scummy predatory practice.

Because 10 dollars now is less than 30 now. Really that simple.  Even if everyone eventually buys all of them for the same money later, the same money now is always better than the same money later.  Especially when quarterly earnings reports come rolling in. If you need more money sooner rather than later, it doesn't help if people give you 10 dollars a year from now. 

Companies also like bundles to encourage you to stick around to make use of what you bought. Retention mechanic in addition to insurance. Even if you do leave, they got the money ahead of time. 

There is no real moral issue here unless they fail to give you what you bought. You either want it and buy it or you don't want it for that price.  No one is forcing you to do anything and you will live just fine without it. I have it and there is nothing so life changing that I couldn't do without it. It has a few new mechanics, some cool cosmetics, but that is about it.  If 10 dollars per map is some kind of financial dealbreaker, you probably should not be worrying about playing ark anyway.

It averages to like 10 dollars per map and most people who enjoy the game are going to play the maps and get em all anyway. 

Edited April 12 by Zeldei

[St1ckyBandit]

4 hours ago, Zeldei said:

Because 10 dollars now is less than 30 now. Really that simple.  Even if everyone eventually buys all of them for the same money later, the same money now is always better than the same money later.  Especially when quarterly earnings reports come rolling in. If you need more money sooner rather than later, it doesn't help if people give you 10 dollars a year from now. 

Companies also like bundles to encourage you to stick around to make use of what you bought. Retention mechanic in addition to insurance. Even if you do leave, they got the money ahead of time. 

There is no real moral issue here unless they fail to give you what you bought. You either want it and buy it or you don't want it for that price.  No one is forcing you to do anything and you will live just fine without it. I have it and there is nothing so life changing that I couldn't do without it. It has a few new mechanics, some cool cosmetics, but that is about it.  If 10 dollars per map is some kind of financial dealbreaker, you probably should not be worrying about playing ark anyway.

It averages to like 10 dollars per map and most people who enjoy the game are going to play the maps and get em all anyway. 

10 bucks isnt going to make or break anyone. Its the principle.

I understand WHY they do it. Its more profit now. Cmon bruh its snail we're talking about here. Shi would try to sell a ketchup popsicle to a women in a white dress.

It's just an underhanded way to squeeze us for all they can before asa completely runs into the ground.

If they were confident they could deliver a worthwhile product on time they wouldn't need to charge us for stuff thats not coming until next year. All this tells me is they know the games teetering and they need to cash in now while they can.

[CptYarrr]

4 hours ago, St1ckyBandit said:

10 bucks isnt going to make or break anyone. Its the principle.

I understand WHY they do it. Its more profit now. Cmon bruh its snail we're talking about here. Shi would try to sell a ketchup popsicle to a women in a white dress.

It's just an underhanded way to squeeze us for all they can before asa completely runs into the ground.

If they were confident they could deliver a worthwhile product on time they wouldn't need to charge us for stuff thats not coming until next year. All this tells me is they know the games teetering and they need to cash in now while they can.

This.

And about 1 year from now it will be the same as in ASE. Devs are told to go work on another cashgrab cause the rum... errr... the money is gone.

ASA will be left simmering in a hotpot. People will go full John Wick on the forum, poor Joel, and maps will be delayed even further into 2027. 

And WildCard looks at it and laughs.

Then the company will be "sold" and everyone who paid about 100 bucks way before half of all maps are released are ARKd. 

History repeats itselves. 

[Joebl0w13]

30 minutes ago, CptYarrr said:

cause the rum... errr... the money is gone

[Zeldei]

On 4/12/2024 at 6:47 AM, St1ckyBandit said:

10 bucks isnt going to make or break anyone. Its the principle.

I understand WHY they do it. Its more profit now. Cmon bruh its snail we're talking about here. Shi would try to sell a ketchup popsicle to a women in a white dress.

It's just an underhanded way to squeeze us for all they can before asa completely runs into the ground.

If they were confident they could deliver a worthwhile product on time they wouldn't need to charge us for stuff thats not coming until next year. All this tells me is they know the games teetering and they need to cash in now while they can.

Honestly, I feel Wildcard is far better than it could otherwise be with microtransactions. Comparatively speaking, it's mild.  Funcom in Conan Exiles both performs worse customer service AND heavily monetizes the game bordering on predatory. 

Wildcard has long since needed to find a way to improve their revenue stream. DLC is a great way to do that.  As long as it provides value to people at a reasonable price, I don't see a problem.  Conan Exiles charges like 20 dollars for a few pillows and wall decorations. 

 

They aren't doing it because the game is failing. They are doing it because they need to generate profit and show consistent performance. It's not really more complicated than that. 

Edited April 14 by Zeldei

[Zeldei]

On 4/12/2024 at 11:00 AM, CptYarrr said:

This.

And about 1 year from now it will be the same as in ASE. Devs are told to go work on another cashgrab cause the rum... errr... the money is gone.

ASA will be left simmering in a hotpot. People will go full John Wick on the forum, poor Joel, and maps will be delayed even further into 2027. 

And WildCard looks at it and laughs.

Then the company will be "sold" and everyone who paid about 100 bucks way before half of all maps are released are ARKd. 

History repeats itselves. 

This is not going to happen. You're doomsaying.  ARK is generally profitable and has a decent player base, being popular. The other IPs were not.   ARK 2 is not going to be as appealing as ARK 1, so ASA, with ASE, are going to be the future of ARK while ARK 2 will have a niche audience. 

 

They are not going to abandon ASA. Too much profit to be made long term. 

[CptYarrr]

5 hours ago, Zeldei said:

This is not going to happen. You're doomsaying.  ARK is generally profitable and has a decent player base, being popular. The other IPs were not.   ARK 2 is not going to be as appealing as ARK 1, so ASA, with ASE, are going to be the future of ARK while ARK 2 will have a niche audience. 

 

They are not going to abandon ASA. Too much profit to be made long term. 

We'll have this convo again in a year from now. See if you still play the game and think the same.

[Pipinghot]

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

You misunderstood.  I didn't criticize people making fun of people who thought it would be new. I am criticizing people who complained it wasn't new when it was obvious it was going to be ARK 1, but in unreal 5. It's a no duh kind of thing.  They literally advertised it as such.

Again, it's not that simple, WC made conflicting claims about what ASA was going to be. The only time they "literally advertised it as such" was when Jesse R. first tweeted (back in January of 2023) that they were going to port ARK from UE4 to UE5 for free.

Every time after that they made claims of how new stuff was going to be added, and in about half of their claims the "new" stuff they were trying to take credit for were nothing more than improvements that would automatically happen as a result of importing into UE5 (like improved pathing for wild dinos, just to name one example). Not only did they make a bunch of claims about how they were adding new stuff, they tried to take credit for improvements that were built into the game engine.

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

You are confusing the claim that they rebuilt the game from scratch and the game being different. I was not addressing the former, but people who complain about the latter.

Ok, fair enough, the comment that I was replying to still looks to me as though you were disagreeing with WCpromoteslaziness, but I'm willing to accept your claim that I'm misreading your intent.

Having said that, criticizing people who "complain about the latter" ignores how much, and how often, WC was deliberately deceitful about what ASA would be. They spent a lot of time trying to use marketing spin to avoid being honest about what they were actually going to deliver. Even back then I was arguing that WC was spinning yarns, but at the same time I have some sympathy for people who believed their marketing lies. It's hard to criticize people who fell for a carefully crafted campaign of disinformation.

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

It was billed as a remaster of the old maps into a new engine that would eventually serve as the platform of continued ARK 1 style content.  You reinforce my point. Buying old water and expecting new water is dumb.

And even being billed as a remaster is an overblown claim. At the time of release it has been 95%-98% imported code/content and 2%-5% new/different stuff. For WC to call that a remaster is intrinsically dishonest. WC claimed they were bottling new water, and they promised it repeatedly.

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

I just watched a Neddy the Noodle video where he moans about how Scorched Earth is the same map and not some brand new map with a tek cave and more bosses. That's not the point of the UE5 update...

But WC has not billed this as merely a "UE5 update", that's not what they've been saying. They have billed it as a "remaster", with claims of the game being recoded and/or containing significant amounts of new content, none of which was true.

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

Being in early access is largely irrelevant.   You already paid money for an early access product, so paying more money for additional content beyond the scope of what you bought is no different.

Being in EA is entirely relevant. When one buys a title in Early Access the intrinsically implied agreement is "You pay us now, and we're going to work on this until it's completed and ready for full release. Then, and only then, we will begin work on expansions and paid DLC." That's what an honest Early Access looks like, anything else is unethical.

Publishing DLC isn't an issue by itself, but it is an issue when they're selling DLC content for a game that isn't even finished yet.

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

It would only be an ethical issue if they use coercion of some kind to force you to buy it or if they cut promised content you paid for after the fact, only to reintroduce it as paid DLC.

And since you brought up the topic of coercion, that's exactly what WC has historically done with their paid DLC's. During the entire run of ASE if you didn't buy the DLC's you were at a competitive disadvantage. Obviously this matters more in PvP than in PvE, but each of the paid DLC's introduced new stuff that gave people an advantage in the game. That's pretty much the definition of soft coercion. They didn't "force" anyone to buy the DLC's, but the alternative was falling behind the curve.

Compare that to Conan Exiles, for example, in which all of the DLC's are purely cosmetic and offer zero advantage during game play. DLC that provides any form of competitive advantage is soft coercion.

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

Nothing wrong with paid DLC to inject money into the system, whether early access or not.

Nope, never going to agree with that. Early Access means "You're helping fund the completion of the base game, which we will complete before trying to sell any DLC."

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

So far, they have been delivering on what content they said they were going to release. And more.

Considering that ASA still has many of the same bugs that have been plaguing ASE since it was in EA, that's an extremely debatable claim.

Don't get me wrong, if you're happy with how much you paid and how much you got, then more power to you, you should enjoy the game if that's what's you want. But in no way does your personal sense of satisfaction mean that WC objectively delivered what they promised.

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

How much money snail makes is immaterial to whether you can charge for content.

Maybe to you, but to many people it's very material. A company that mismanaged their revenue and cash flow, that then turns around and asks the public to crowd-fund a re-release of what is 95% the exact same game, that's very material to lots of people.

On 4/12/2024 at 12:50 AM, Zeldei said:

No company is going to just give you all additions for the future for free because you bought the base game. Be lucky wildcard isn't Funcom where they charge 20.00 for a pillow you can't sit on.

Oh no, I prefer FunCom's model - almost all DLC's (except for the 2nd map) are purely cosmetic and don't affect game play at all. Even Isle of Siptah didn't give a competitive advantage because the two maps are separate from each other. All DLC's in Conan give zero competitive advantage and players can choose to buy as much or as little of it as they want to, that's a clearly superior model from the player point of view.

[Pipinghot]

On 4/12/2024 at 12:52 AM, Zeldei said:

I said Atlas was not made by Wildcard. That's a true statement.

Except it's not entirely accurate.

You've already described Atlas as an asset flip, which means you should understand that the underlying game was made by WC and then re-skinned for Atlas. One of the biggest criticisms of Atlas was that it was very obviously ARK but reskinned. Or perhaps you'd prefer to see that described as a new game using the ARK game engine, which would also be a fair description, but that game engine was still made by WC. The graphics were made by the new studio, and changes continued to be made after release, but at the time of release the game engine was made by WC.

Atlas was not made entirely by WC, but at the time of release (and for some time afterwards) it's fair to say that the majority of Atlas was made by WC.

[Pipinghot]

On 4/12/2024 at 1:06 AM, Zeldei said:

I don't disagree that Atlas was an asset flip of ark.  It was also made by snail, the publisher. The point being made is that it's not the ark devs.

Yes it was, at the time of release. The game engine was created by the ARK devs, then it was reskinned by the new developer. And, you can bet your bottom dollar that many of the same names that were listed in the credits for developing ARK were also listed in the credits for developing Atlas. It was not merely an asset flip, both games had some/many of the same developers work on them.

On 4/12/2024 at 1:06 AM, Zeldei said:

This is like saying because Blizzard publishes both WoW and Overwatch, you can point to issues in WoW's development team explaining issues with Overwatch.

It's not at all the same. ARK and Atlas have the same code base whereas WoW & Overwatch don't share any code.

ARK and Atlas are two games built from the same game engine, WoW and Overwatch are two entirely different games.

On 4/12/2024 at 1:06 AM, Zeldei said:

Just because Atlas was abandoned and never went anywhere doesn't mean the ark devs are responsible for that.  That is on grapeshot and snail's executive decisions.

That's sort of true, except for the fact that even back then WC/Snail were really one company. The idea that WC & Snail are not related to each other is a business-fiction. They are technically different business entities but really they're one company.

Having said that, yes, it was mostly the Snail side of the business that was to blame for Atlas' failure, but it has to be acknowledged that he code base Atlas started with was the ARK game engine. Obviously it could be argued that this was a bad choice of game engine for Atlas and that WC/Snail should have chosen a different engine, but regardless of any good/bad decisions made by their management team, it's still true that "the ark devs are responsible" for the code that Atlas ran on.

On 4/12/2024 at 1:06 AM, Zeldei said:

The post implied that the people designing ASA were the ones who were responsible for Atlas being a failure. They aren't. Ark, and its dev team, have largely been successful. 

Yes, the ARK game engine was a better game engine for ARK than it was for Atlas.

[Pipinghot]

7 hours ago, Zeldei said:

Honestly, I feel Wildcard is far better than it could otherwise be with microtransactions.

That's a pretty low bar you're setting there. Better than awful is still not good.

I mean, you're making a true statement, they're better than other companies that are worse, but that still doesn't mean that they meet the bar for being "good".

7 hours ago, Zeldei said:

Funcom in Conan Exiles both performs worse customer service AND heavily monetizes the game bordering on predatory.

Wildcard has long since needed to find a way to improve their revenue stream. DLC is a great way to do that.  As long as it provides value to people at a reasonable price, I don't see a problem.  Conan Exiles charges like 20 dollars for a few pillows and wall decorations. 

I've played plenty of both games, going back almost to beta for both games, and submitted multiple support tickets for both games over the years, and I completely disagree with both elements of that statement.

Even if we factor in that the customer service for Conan has degraded since FunCom was effectively bought by TenCent, they still have an overall better history of customer service and a better history of bug fixes than WC/ARK have had. Over the lifetime of these two games, WC has focused more on quantity over quality, FunCom has focused more on quality over quantity.

And, to reiterate, all DLC's in Conan except for the 2nd map are entirely cosmetic, whereas almost all of the DLC for ARK has involved soft coercion on players to buy them or fall behind.

7 hours ago, Zeldei said:

They aren't doing it because the game is failing. They are doing it because they need to generate profit and show consistent performance. It's not really more complicated than that. 

They're doing it because they mismanaged the company and were about $13 million in debt with severely negative cash flow, requiring them to use a variety of dishonest tactics to get players to crowd-fund their continued existence. It's not really more complicated than that.

Edited April 14 by Pipinghot

[CptYarrr]

4 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

They're doing it because they mismanaged the company and were about $13 million in debt with severely negative cash flow, requiring them to use a variety of dishonest tactics to get players to crowd-fund their continued existence. It's not really more complicated than that.

And dont forget the deadline. If the game was released after that, they'd loose all rights to Nitrado. 

[MartyBftw]

After multiple issues that effected gameplay in a major way and even a 12 hour rollback and WC not even extending rates. Not even for the 12 hours we lost. Nice. 

[Zeldei]

On 4/14/2024 at 4:33 AM, CptYarrr said:

We'll have this convo again in a year from now. See if you still play the game and think the same.

I played the original ark for 7 years. No reason to stop now.  I only changed because ASA is objectively an upgrade.  

[Zeldei]

On 4/14/2024 at 6:01 AM, Pipinghot said:

Except it's not entirely accurate.

You've already described Atlas as an asset flip, which means you should understand that the underlying game was made by WC and then re-skinned for Atlas. One of the biggest criticisms of Atlas was that it was very obviously ARK but reskinned. Or perhaps you'd prefer to see that described as a new game using the ARK game engine, which would also be a fair description, but that game engine was still made by WC. The graphics were made by the new studio, and changes continued to be made after release, but at the time of release the game engine was made by WC.

Atlas was not made entirely by WC, but at the time of release (and for some time afterwards) it's fair to say that the majority of Atlas was made by WC.

It is accurate because it's a different team/studio that made Atlas. Flipping assets from ASE doesn't make Atlas a product of the ark devs. By that logic, the makers of Unreal Engine actually make every game that uses the engine. 

Atlas and Ark share a publisher and that publisher authorized other sub branch studios to make the games. I.E. Grapeshot.

Ultimatley, this entire conversation started because someone said we should just write off ASA because it is the same as Atlas or Dark and Light, being made by the same people. That's a false statement.

The context is important here. Asset flips by Snail like Dark and Light, Atlas, etc, are not ARK, so you can't make the same conclusions about the future of one compared to the other as ARK is actually popular, a money-maker, and far more than a superficial flip.  Why would you assume Wildcard is going to just abandon Ark when they haven't for the past 8 years and are currently investing loads of manhours into updating all the maps? It makes no sense. It's pure doomsaying. 

Edited April 16 by Zeldei

[Zeldei]

On 4/14/2024 at 6:09 AM, Pipinghot said:

Yes it was, at the time of release. The game engine was created by the ARK devs, then it was reskinned by the new developer. And, you can bet your bottom dollar that many of the same names that were listed in the credits for developing ARK were also listed in the credits for developing Atlas. It was not merely an asset flip, both games had some/many of the same developers work on them.

It's not at all the same. ARK and Atlas have the same code base whereas WoW & Overwatch don't share any code.

ARK and Atlas are two games built from the same game engine, WoW and Overwatch are two entirely different games.

That's sort of true, except for the fact that even back then WC/Snail were really one company. The idea that WC & Snail are not related to each other is a business-fiction. They are technically different business entities but really they're one company.

Having said that, yes, it was mostly the Snail side of the business that was to blame for Atlas' failure, but it has to be acknowledged that he code base Atlas started with was the ARK game engine. Obviously it could be argued that this was a bad choice of game engine for Atlas and that WC/Snail should have chosen a different engine, but regardless of any good/bad decisions made by their management team, it's still true that "the ark devs are responsible" for the code that Atlas ran on.

Yes, the ARK game engine was a better game engine for ARK than it was for Atlas.

 

As you admit, it was snail's corporate decisions that were largely responsible for Atlas and Dark and Light being failures, not the actual ARK devs, which brings us back to the original point I made that you can't say ASA will fail because it is the devs who brought you Atlas. It's a misleading argument as Atlas did not fail because of ARK game developers caused it to fail. Nor is the team who made ark the same team working on Atlas. 

I never said Snail and Wildcard were not related entities. I said it's silly to blame the people working on ARK for  of Atlas' failure because the people who made Atlas fail were not the ARK devs.  It failed because of bad business decisions and slopply, uncaring asset flipping that ark devs had nothing to do with. 

Given ARK is a functional game, profitable, and wildly popular, it stands to reason if Atlas were a failure because of the assets/coding from ARK, ARK would be too.  Yet that is not true. Clearly, there are other factors at work: sloppy application of the assets, executive mismanagement, etc.  You are confusing bean counters and executives for ark devs.  This is like blaming World of Warcraft raid encounter devs for stuff Blizzard Entertainment's executives do.  

Also, ARK devs did not create the game engine. The company behind Unreal did.  The ARk devs made a game out of an existing engine. They did not create a proprietary engine on their own.  This is the difference between what HALO used to use and the engine they made "in house." 

 

 

 

[Zeldei]

On 4/14/2024 at 6:21 AM, Pipinghot said:

That's a pretty low bar you're setting there. Better than awful is still not good.

I mean, you're making a true statement, they're better than other companies that are worse, but that still doesn't mean that they meet the bar for being "good".

I've played plenty of both games, going back almost to beta for both games, and submitted multiple support tickets for both games over the years, and I completely disagree with both elements of that statement.

Even if we factor in that the customer service for Conan has degraded since FunCom was effectively bought by TenCent, they still have an overall better history of customer service and a better history of bug fixes than WC/ARK have had. Over the lifetime of these two games, WC has focused more on quantity over quality, FunCom has focused more on quality over quantity.

And, to reiterate, all DLC's in Conan except for the 2nd map are entirely cosmetic, whereas almost all of the DLC for ARK has involved soft coercion on players to buy them or fall behind.

They're doing it because they mismanaged the company and were about $13 million in debt with severely negative cash flow, requiring them to use a variety of dishonest tactics to get players to crowd-fund their continued existence. It's not really more complicated than that.

The customer service and quality of Funcom in Conan Exiles has gone down considerably. Yes. 

Even putting aside the horrible customer service, Funcom nickel and dimes you to death. Yes, it is cosmetic, but so mostly is ARK AND it is cheaper.  Nothing in the ASA Bob's Tall Tails really matters either. It is mostly cosmetic stuff and a single creature that is meh.  You get more in Bob's tall tale than you can ever get on the Conan Exiles Bazaar/store for the same price.  I am not joking when I say you will pay 20 dollars for a couple cosmetic items in Conan Exiles.  And they aren't even functional cosmetics. The recent Yamatai pillow seat set you can't even sit on!

On top of it, nothing ever works in COnan Exiles and the stuff that fails is castatrophic, resulting in entire bases being destroyed, deleted, etc. Everyone's thralls dying randomly. Decay being set to 1 day by accident, etc. I have never experienced anything remotely close to that in ARK. 

There is no coercion to buy any of the ARK DLC.  A). Past DLC was map expansions, which are also paid DLC in COnan Exiles.  B). Recent DLC in ark is 99% RP.  If anything, ARK DLC has always been incredibly generous to people who don't even own the DLC. You didn't need to own any of hte map DLCs to use map assets or even tame/ride creatures.  You could use Extinction, Aberration, and Gen 2 stuff without ever buying the DLC. Granted, the Bob's Tall Tales DOES have that restriction on the Oasisaur, but the creature sucks anyway., so it ends up being moot.  And while transfers were active on Siptah (before disabling them years later), Siptah was decried as pay to win. 

Of course they are offering DLC for cash flow. It's a business, not a charity.  My point stands that Wildcard's price to value ratio is dramatically better and less predatory than Funcom. It could be a whole lot worse. 

Edited April 16 by Zeldei

[Zeldei]

On 4/14/2024 at 5:56 AM, Pipinghot said:

Again, it's not that simple, WC made conflicting claims about what ASA was going to be. The only time they "literally advertised it as such" was when Jesse R. first tweeted (back in January of 2023) that they were going to port ARK from UE4 to UE5 for free.

Every time after that they made claims of how new stuff was going to be added, and in about half of their claims the "new" stuff they were trying to take credit for were nothing more than improvements that would automatically happen as a result of importing into UE5 (like improved pathing for wild dinos, just to name one example). Not only did they make a bunch of claims about how they were adding new stuff, they tried to take credit for improvements that were built into the game engine.

Ok, fair enough, the comment that I was replying to still looks to me as though you were disagreeing with WCpromoteslaziness, but I'm willing to accept your claim that I'm misreading your intent.

Having said that, criticizing people who "complain about the latter" ignores how much, and how often, WC was deliberately deceitful about what ASA would be. They spent a lot of time trying to use marketing spin to avoid being honest about what they were actually going to deliver. Even back then I was arguing that WC was spinning yarns, but at the same time I have some sympathy for people who believed their marketing lies. It's hard to criticize people who fell for a carefully crafted campaign of disinformation.

And even being billed as a remaster is an overblown claim. At the time of release it has been 95%-98% imported code/content and 2%-5% new/different stuff. For WC to call that a remaster is intrinsically dishonest. WC claimed they were bottling new water, and they promised it repeatedly.

But WC has not billed this as merely a "UE5 update", that's not what they've been saying. They have billed it as a "remaster", with claims of the game being recoded and/or containing significant amounts of new content, none of which was true.

Being in EA is entirely relevant. When one buys a title in Early Access the intrinsically implied agreement is "You pay us now, and we're going to work on this until it's completed and ready for full release. Then, and only then, we will begin work on expansions and paid DLC." That's what an honest Early Access looks like, anything else is unethical.

Publishing DLC isn't an issue by itself, but it is an issue when they're selling DLC content for a game that isn't even finished yet.

And since you brought up the topic of coercion, that's exactly what WC has historically done with their paid DLC's. During the entire run of ASE if you didn't buy the DLC's you were at a competitive disadvantage. Obviously this matters more in PvP than in PvE, but each of the paid DLC's introduced new stuff that gave people an advantage in the game. That's pretty much the definition of soft coercion. They didn't "force" anyone to buy the DLC's, but the alternative was falling behind the curve.

Compare that to Conan Exiles, for example, in which all of the DLC's are purely cosmetic and offer zero advantage during game play. DLC that provides any form of competitive advantage is soft coercion.

Nope, never going to agree with that. Early Access means "You're helping fund the completion of the base game, which we will complete before trying to sell any DLC."

Considering that ASA still has many of the same bugs that have been plaguing ASE since it was in EA, that's an extremely debatable claim.

Don't get me wrong, if you're happy with how much you paid and how much you got, then more power to you, you should enjoy the game if that's what's you want. But in no way does your personal sense of satisfaction mean that WC objectively delivered what they promised.

Maybe to you, but to many people it's very material. A company that mismanaged their revenue and cash flow, that then turns around and asks the public to crowd-fund a re-release of what is 95% the exact same game, that's very material to lots of people.

Oh no, I prefer FunCom's model - almost all DLC's (except for the 2nd map) are purely cosmetic and don't affect game play at all. Even Isle of Siptah didn't give a competitive advantage because the two maps are separate from each other. All DLC's in Conan give zero competitive advantage and players can choose to buy as much or as little of it as they want to, that's a clearly superior model from the player point of view.

The two maps were not always separate from each other. Not at all. That was a later development by years.  They turned off transfers later.  For quite some time, Siptah offered a massive advantage through objectively more powerful gear, far easier resources for end game. 

The problem was comical after they finally removed transfers as people on official exiled lands servers still have vaults full of items from Siptah that people can't get anymore. So it is worse, I'd argue. Some people have the benefit of things others cannot ever get. 

Most of Bob's Tall Tales DLC is cosmetic, too.  And even older ARK DLC's were incredibly generous. Anyone can use, ride the map creatures or DLC items and Wildcard literally lets people play on free maps with tech and items from paid DLC maps. IT was so generous it was making people who bought DLC mad.  We had people on Twitch RP servers riding Shadowmane who didn't even own Gen 2. 

And ya, I don't see any false advertisement in ASA. I got exactly what I paid for. The problem is that people make assumptions and then hear what they want to hear to confirm stuff never actually said.  It is not the case that Ark Devs said the remastered maps would be new experiences with tek caves, new bosses, etc. They said they were going to update the old maps to unreal 5 and then, at a later date, create new DLC and story content. All of that is true and a work in progress. The only legitimate complaint I have heard is that ASA was supposed to be free and they lied about making brand new code, not that it doesn't deliver what it promised.   

[Pipinghot]

3 hours ago, Zeldei said:

As you admit, it was snail's corporate decisions that were largely responsible for Atlas and Dark and Light being failures, not the actual ARK devs, which brings us back to the original point I made that you can't say ASA will fail because it is the devs who brought you Atlas.

That was not your original point, your first comment in this sequence came from WCpromoteslaziness and you said nothing of the sort when replying to him.

This is the sequence:

1) WCpromoteslaziness: "Also the treasure map system was taken from Atlas another game these rats abandoned but in that you didnt need to pay for them "

2) Zeldei: "Atlas isn't A studio wildcard product."

3) Pipinghot: "While that's technically true it misses the point that you're replying too."

4) Zeldai: "I don't disagree that Atlas was an asset flip of ark.  It was also made by snail, the publisher. The point being made is that it's not the ark devs."

5) Pipinghot: "Yes it was, at the time of release."

6) Zeldei: "As you admit, it was snail's corporate decisions that were largely responsible for Atlas and Dark and Light being failures, not the actual ARK devs, which brings us back to the original point I made that you can't say ASA will fail because it is the devs who brought you Atlas. It's a misleading argument as Atlas did not fail because of ARK game developers caused it to fail. Nor is the team who made ark the same team working on Atlas. "

 

a) So no, that wasn't your original point, in your response to WCPromoteslazines you're clearly not addressing any argument about ASA failing because it was made by ARK devs.

b) I'm pretty sure no one in this thread has said that ASA will fail because it is made by the devs who brought you Atlas. I'm not going to re-read every single post in the thread, but unless you can find a quote that expresses that sentiment, you're making up an argument to argue against.

c) And, even if someone did say that, it had nothing to do with what WCpromoteslazines said, nor to do with your reply to him, nor to do with the details of subsequent exchanges between you and me.

[Pipinghot]

3 hours ago, Zeldei said:

You are confusing bean counters and executives for ark devs.

No, I'm definitely not, if you think that then you've gotten confused by the give-and-take of the conversation and you need to re-read it.

3 hours ago, Zeldei said:

Also, ARK devs did not create the game engine. The company behind Unreal did.  The ARk devs made a game out of an existing engine. They did not create a proprietary engine on their own.  This is the difference between what HALO used to use and the engine they made "in house."

Ok, this is a fair point, I used a the term "game engine ambiguously. Yes, no question about it, Unreal publishes the game engine (UE4).

So for the portion of the game that was written by WC/ARK devs I'm going to call that the "game mechanics engine", the game mechanics engine is a layer that runs on top of the game engine.

So with this in mind, let's revisit the things I've said about ARK & Atlas. The ARK developers wrote the game mechanics engine for ARK. That game mechanics engine was re-used by Snail for the game Atlas. At the time Atlas was released it was almost entirely just a reskin of the ARK game mechanics. This means that Atlas was mostly created by the ARK devs, with reskinning and a few changes done by the new company.

Now none of this means that the failure of Atlas should be blamed on the original devs that wrote the game mechanics engine, which was used in both ARK and Atlas. I've certainly never made this claim and I wouldn't support it if someone else did. Neither the UE4 game engine nor the ARK game mechanics engine are responsible for the failure of Atlas, but that doesn't change the fact that the game mechanics engine used in Atlas was created by WildCard and their ARK development team.

[TonyTempah]

Sorry, I've been busy getting a foothold in the Hard area of Scorched Earth for the last couple of weeks so not up to speed with the latest WCsnail complaints...