I am Jack's Disappointment

[WCpromoteslaziness]

9 hours ago, Zeldei said:

You already quoted it in this post. They are literally saying "these rats also abandoned Atlas," in the context of a complaint about ASA devs..  The implication is that A and B are one and the same people (they aren't) and thus we should not trust ASA devs to do ASA because they already abandoned other games. 

The ARK devs in wildcard never abandoned Atlas.  Hence my post that Atlas is not a studio wildcard product. At no point did "these rats abandon Atlas too." 

 

The statement is also dubious because the game wasn't even abandoned and shut down. It had its 13th season just last summer! Dark and Light was actually abandoned and never even feature complete out of early access.  Strange for a game that came out in 2019 to still have updates all the way to 23 and be abandoned, huh?  So everything about what that guy said is a lie. 

Lmao I have been playing atlas since launch off and on and yes while WC now have nothing to do with it no more that is true but when the devs from WC did leave to work on the new ark (ASA) they took with them a ton of work that the future atlas team lost access to and they even at one point had to make brand new stuff just to get the game kinda running again as they couldn't change existing content.

 

Nowadays yes we get new "seasons" every few months but nothing has changed for over a year and at once point recently nobody could get on their servers for a month nearly!

 

Maybe do some homework instead of calling people a liar!

[Pipinghot]

23 hours ago, Zeldei said:

You already quoted it in this post. They are literally saying "these rats also abandoned Atlas," in the context of a complaint about ASA devs.

Since you bring up context, let's talk about that.

The problem is that you have an overly narrow interpretation of what people mean when they complain about "the devs". When people complain about "the devs" they almost never are specifically referring to the people who sit at their desks writing the computer code. What they mean is the development company, and most of the time that means the owners, leaders and managers who make the decision about how the developers' time will be allocated - new content, bug fixes, etc. While it's true that sometimes people use "the devs" to mean the people writing the code what they usually mean is the people at the development company who make the decisions that they are complaining about.

You made the assumption that @WCpromoteslazinesswas only, and specifically, referring to the people who write the code, but from the context of his post it was clearly obvious that he was referring to the leaders and decision makers of the development company, yet you started arguing about the people who put their hands on the keyboard and write computer code. This whole exchange started because you chose a flawed interpretation of "the devs" that did not match the context of the thread overall, nor the context of the specific post you were replying to.

"The devs" = Wildcard, and WildCard = "the devs", for you to assume that he explicitly meant the programmers was a bad interpretation on your part, especially given the context of his post in the overall discussion.

23 hours ago, Zeldei said:

The implication is that A and B are one and the same people (they aren't) and thus we should not trust ASA devs to do ASA because they already abandoned other games.

When we consider that the context of "the devs" means "the people who own and manage the development company, the people who make the decisions about how the game will be developed, managed and operated" his comments are obviosly on target.

Atlas was created, owned and operated and by the same people who were responsible for the creation and operation of WildCard & ARK (specifically Jesse Rapczak & Jeremy Stieglitz, two of the four founders of WC). The reality that permeates this whole discussion is that the same people have been the owners, operators and decision makers for both games since the very beginning, which means that WCpromoteslaziness was making a legitimate comparison.

When he said, "those rats" he did not mean the developers who wrote the original computer code, he meant the owners and decision makers for both games. The owners and leaders of A and B are pretty much "one and the same people" (especially when you consider that Snail and it's CEO Shi Hai are on top of the pyramid for both of these games.

23 hours ago, Zeldei said:

and thus we should not trust ASA devs to do ASA because they already abandoned other games. 

The ARK devs in wildcard never abandoned Atlas.  Hence my post that Atlas is not a studio wildcard product. At no point did "these rats abandon Atlas too."

The people who wrote the computer code didn't do these things but, "the devs" did.

The idea that Studio WildCard, Grapeshotgames and Snail are separate companies is a legal business fiction. They are technically separate business entities on paper but in reality the same people are in the board room for all of them. "The devs" who run these companies are the same people everywhere you look.

23 hours ago, Zeldei said:

The statement is also dubious because the game wasn't even abandoned and shut down.

A game doesn't have to be shut down to be abandoned. Atlas is zombie game. For all intents and purposes it's been abandoned, with nothing meaningful being do with it for a long time. Again, this is about context, which you have pointed out is important.

In the context of their post, "abandoned" did not mean shut down, again you're choosing the wrong interpretation. It meant a game that is in zombie mode with no serious efforts made to improve or expand it for quite some time.

23 hours ago, Zeldei said:

So everything about what that guy said is a lie. 

No, you've chosen to argue against wrong interpretations of their post, your out-of-context interpretations are the problem.

[Pipinghot]

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

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

Even putting aside the horrible customer service, Funcom...

No, you don't get to twist my words like that and expect to get away with it.

Again...

"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."

It would be dishonest to "put aside" either company's customer service when the point you were replying to was about comparing their customer service. You've made claims about FunCom's customer service so you can't just duck out of that conversation now and pretend it didn't happen.

Even if we take into account that FC's customer service is not as good as it used to be, it's still better than WC's has been.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

Yes, it is cosmetic, but so mostly is ARK AND it is cheaper.

No, ARK's DLC is not mostly cosmetic. Almost all of their DLC's have been direct gameplay DLC's and all of them have included power creep features.

And just so you understand, no one's complaining about paying for maps during ASE, so don't get the idea that anyone (including me) thinks that the original ASE maps should all have been free. The complaint about the paid DLC maps in ASE was that they all included power creep, that is the crux of the issue being discussed.

This one specific DLC, Bob's, is the first DLC they've ever produced that's mostly cosmetic. All of their other DLC, for the entire history of ARK, has been functional game DLC, with only a couple of cosmetic items included in each DLC before now. In the meanwhile, Conan has been selling entirely cosmetic DLC for years.

This is the first time WC has tried anything remotely like a cosmetic pack, and even now they deliberately included items that affect game play and cause power creep. Bob's has 39 items in it with 17 of those items affecting game play and some of them being OP items. So even now, when WC is putting more DLC into this cosmetic pack than they have before, it still has a substantial number of items that affect game play and introduce power creep to the game.

Whether you like or dislike the Oasisaur, whether you think it's weak or strong, is beside the point. It's still true that the Oasisaur affects game play and so do 16 other items in the pack. If "Bob's" had been entirely cosmetic this would be a different conversation, but it's not entirely cosmetic, which means it's still inferior to Conan's cosmetic DLC packs.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

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!

Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure we could spend time comparing each of the various DLC's and quantifying how many cosmetic items you get and the price of each... but all of that completely misses the point.

You can argue all day long about which game gives you more cosmetics for your money but you're having the wrong argument. The point is that the Conan DLC's are all cosmetic, which means the DLC's in Conan are entirely optional. If people don't want to buy them there's no pressure on the player to do so, if people do want to then the player can decide whether or not it's worth the price, and whatever they choose their game play is not affected nor impacted.

But all of the DLCs in ARK include items that cause power creep in the game, with some of them being OP items, which means that a player has to buy the DLC if they want to keep up with the power curve of the game. WC deliberately builds their DLC to create considerable pressure on players to spend the money or fall behind.

In Conan players spend the money because they want to, in ARK players have to spend the money or they are weakened compared to other players.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

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.

Then you've been extremely lucky in ARK. Many, many (MANY) people have experienced plenty of catastrophic bugs in ARK equally as terrible as anything that has ever happened in Conan. There have been multiple bugs over the years that resulted in "entire bases being destroyed", people losing all or most of their tames, losing max level characters, getting locked out of their tribe, getting locked out of the game while their entire base decays and all of their tames despawn, etc. As we've already discussed, FunCom is not as good about bugs as they used to be, basically since Tencent took them over. But (again) even if we take into account the fact that FunCom has deteriorated somewhat they still have a better track record of not-breaking-the-game than WC has.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

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.

The difference is that every new DLC in ARK causes power creep, which puts pressure on players to buy the DLC or get left behind. That is the very definition of coercion. No one is "forced" to buy ARK DLC but if they don't then they will be weakened compared to other players, that's what coercion is.

When Conan released Siptah they found out that players were able to use transferring between the two maps to gain advantages over players who only owned Exiles. After some time they decided to stop transfers so that all players on the Exiles map were on a level playing field with other players on the Exiles map, and the same with Siptah-vs-Siptah players. But in ARK the new maps include power creep on purpose, it's a deliberate part of WC's plan to coerce people into buying the new DLC/map or fall behind the power curve.

 WC could have introduced new maps in such a way that they did not create power creep, but instead they see power creep as a feature they can leverage, a tool for pushing people into more sales, they are deliberately coercing players to buy each new DLC by putting people at at a disadvantage if they don't.

FunCom wants their players to have a level playing field, WildCard deliberately uses power creep as a way to coerce people into buying each DLC.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

B). Recent DLC in ark is 99% RP.

False. The facts are calling you out and you're waaay off.

17 of the 39 items in Bob's affect game play, and some of them are truly OP. Technically that's 56.4% RP, but even that number overlooks or ignores just how much the power-creep items can matter in the game. Even if you were right, even if it was 99% RP (which again, it's not, that's way off) that other 1% would still matter if it was OP. Adding any power creep to a DLC is inferior to a DLC that is entirely RP.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

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.

Eventually yes, you could do that, but only after the people who bought it early were already far ahead of you. And to be clear, there's some truth to what you're saying, I agree with you in part. Since this is more nuanced for PvE than for PvP I'll address them separately.

For PvE players and single-players, if they were willing to wait until the next free DLC map was released they could gain access to the power-creep features that were introduced with each paid DLC map. That's something WildCard did that was good. But it still doesn't change the fact that making people wait for months to have access to the recent power-creep content was a form of soft coercion. It's reasonable to argue that PvE and single-players could simply exercise some self-restraint and gain access to that content when the next free DLC map was released. But this still means that Conan DLC has almost all been cosmetic, with no pressure to buy the DLC or fall behind other players, and each new DLC has been equally available to all players in the game at the same time. In Conan people all players whether PvE, PvP or single-player all gain access to each new DLC at the same time as everyone else.

Advantage: FunCom.

 

Now we move on to PvP, where things are worse. For PvP players that "generosity" meant nothing. If someone was a PvP player when a new paid DLC map was released they had two options - a) buy it right away or b) get a beat-down from people who bought it.

By comparison, the only time Conan ever released a DLC that gave an advantage in PvP was when they released Siptah, and then FunCom made the decision that this was not a fair way to treat PvP players, and ever since that one release they have made sure that all PvP players in the game have access to changes that affect gameplay at the same time. Changes to thralls that affect PvP? All PvP players get it at the same time. Changes that affect weapon performance? All PvP players get it at the same time. Changes that affect attacking/defending bases? All PvP players get it at the same time.

But in ARK every DLC that has ever been released, including Bob's, gives an immediate advantage to people who buy it right away. Again, using power creep as a tool for coercion.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

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 again, the Oasisaur is only one small part of the picture. A significant portion of of the items in Bob's affect game play, and some of them are truly OP. That goes way beyond any discussion of whether the Oasisaur is good or not.

Also again, every Conan DLC except for one, Siptah, has been 100% cosmetic whereas not one paid DLC for ARK has been 100% cosmetic.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

And while transfers were active on Siptah (before disabling them years later), Siptah was decried as pay to win.

True. After releasing Siptah, FunCom (eventually) listened to the players, decided that it was P2W and reversed their decision, stopping map transfers so that players on both maps were on a level playing field. WIldCard, on the other hand, has deliberately ensured that all of their DLCs, including Bob's, are P2W by adding power creep to every DLC as a way to coerce people into buying them.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

Of course they are offering DLC for cash flow. It's a business, not a charity.

True, but pointless of you to mention. Of course they're both businesses, and of course they're not charities, because duh obviously. That's neither here nor there because it has nothing at all to do with the discussion.

The issue being debated is which of those businesses treats their customers better and has less predatory business practices.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

My point stands that Wildcard's price to value ratio is dramatically better and less predatory than Funcom.

That's objectively false. WildCard's model for DLC is much more coercive and predatory than FunCom's, for all of the reasons listed above.

Advantage: FunCom.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 PM, Zeldei said:

It could be a whole lot worse.

Repeating your lousy argument doesn't make it better.

Setting the bar low for WildCard doesn't argue in your favor, it simply shows that you know your position is weak and you're trying to make excuses for WildCard. If you have to make excuses like that for WildCard then you already know FunCom is doing a better job.

Advantage: FunCom.

Edited April 21 by Pipinghot

[CptYarrr]

So, how you guys liking "Da Club"?

Is it a feat we really REALLY need in ARK? 
And the speed of how fast its getting patched is amazing compared to other big updates.