ARK Fantastic Tames and The Center Ascended are Live!

[FlorianWind9]

On 6/7/2024 at 12:54 PM, Brettskii said:

hey man If you cant afford it just say it lol.

My apologies for responding so late. I've been away from the internet for awhile. 

Unfortunately my good sir, you have once again misunderstood the real point of all this. 

The cost has almost absolutely nothing to do with it. I mean, $5 for a single creature is getting a bit on the ridiculous side when comparing costs for digital DLC extras from other games. Still, that's not really the point. Affordability is not an issue with me here.

I spend about $500 on digital game licenses for my Steam Library annually in order to feed my collection. I'm up to about 500 games collected on my Steam Library now. (Yes, I know I have a problem.) 😛 

Heck, I just spent over $500 during my vacation trip last week on Dinosaur Fossils and Mineral Samples to add to my collection of those. Who here loves Dinosaurs right? 😉

Selling extra critters in DLC packs also isn't the real issue for me here. Yes, when video game companies do this it irritates me a bit as I feel that these things should have already been included in the main game and when they aren't then I can never feel like I truly have "The Game" until I have "Completed" it by buying all the DLCs. Just feels like a jerky way to get more money out of people, but I always counter this by simply waiting for good sale prices. I happily bought all the Dino DLC packs for Jurassic World Evolution after-all. 

No, the point here is not the money. The point here is that Ark Survival Ascended is NOT Jurassic World Evolution. 

What I mean by that is that Ark is not a mostly solo PVE game where if you don't have something then it won't matter and if you truly feel the game is worth it then you can just buy the extra DLCs whenever. No, Ark is a massively multiplayer competitive experience; even on PVE servers. This kind of DLC branching doesn't work for competitive multiplayer games. In this situation, if you don't have something then you can't just wait and get it later when you can. You have to have it now, or else you're at a massive disadvantage against everyone else who does. 

This does not mean that I am against video game companies making money. Nor am I entirely against microtransactions, in-game shops, or battle passes of some kind. If you were to read some of my earlier posts on these forums, then you would see that I am entirely for Ark having some form of limited Battle Pass similar to how Clash of Clans/Clash Royale does it. How they do it, there is a Free Track and then the option to purchase a Premium Track. In both cases to actually get the rewards the player has to work for them by completing tasks; not just pay out money.

Allowing a Free Track means that if Free to play players work for it then they will not be as disadvantaged towards Premium players as they would be if there was no Free Track. It means that if the Premium players get lazy then there is a chance that their money won't even give them any advantage. And further, most of the time the advantage given is just exclusive limited edition cosmetics and emotes; along with a few extra resources and buffs. This allows the Premium players to feel superior, yet at the same time the advantage they get can be countered if the Free players work hard enough.

For Ark, I think something along the lines of getting resources, building pieces, and maybe certain tames along the track would work out well for the game. Battle Pass buyers, over the free trackers, would perhaps gain a larger number of resources and building pieces; and perhaps slightly better tames either by level or by type. The ultimate reward at the end for Premium players would be some kind exclusive skin or emote like it is in COC. 

But if you're going to have DLC packs behind paywalls that give massive advantages to people in a competitive multiplayer platform without allowing free players any way to get around the advantages then you have a system that will not be a fair experience which ruins the competitive nature of the game and turns it into a Pay To Win system. 

For A.S.E. this wasn't so bad. Yes, there were paid story expansion DLCs that gave access to items and creatures that could be an advantage towards those who didn't have them. But, in many cases these advantages could be countered through trading with friends who had purchased the DLCs, through keeping players who had these advantages off your servers since the advantages were map specific, and through acquiring these advantages through the FREE DLC maps which also gave access to them. 

But in A.S.A., we are slowly going down a road where these paid advantages can not be countered by non-monetary means. Free DLC maps will not give access to them, as you still have to own the DLC to utilize them. Keeping players who have these advantages off your server will not work, because these advantages are not map specific in that if you have the map you have them or if you don't have the map you don't; nope, now you can have Scorched Earth but not have Trains, or now you can have The Center but not the Pyromane. Trading with friends who have purchased the DLCs also will not entirely be a solution due to how the coding for these DLCs works differently versus how they worked in A.S.E. 

For the Bob's Tall Tales DLC pack I ended up not seeing this as being a super big issue. The Scorched Earth one, at least, really ended up being more cosmetic than anything. Didn't truly give a super big advantage in any way; and I kinda assumed the same would be for the other Tall Tales additions.

For this Pyromane though, it is clearly a MASSIVE advantage. In a game version where cryopods are nerfed to the point of being useless, and where the only other creature in the entire game that functions in a similar way is the Ferox which won't be obtainable until Genesis Part 1 and even then requires element to utilize, having a creature that you can basically throw out of its "Cryopod" at will becomes a massive advantage for running caves and other uses behind an extra $5 pay wall. That is called PAY TO WIN and that creates an unfair game system when in a competitive environment. 

This is the point. The blatant greed and the unfair advantage forcing their players to give them more money. 

Even still, if the game and the development company where truly wonderful and I deeply respected them I could look past this. But to make things worse, neither the game nor the development company have shown that they are worth this over the last year especially. 

During the Steam Spring sale, because Steam knows that I play Ark, I happened to see Ark Survival Ascended pop up on my store's front page. Looking at it, I noticed that it was on a considerable discount for the sale; and even better, I saw that because I owned A.S.E. they were giving me an extra discount. When I saw this, I thought in my mind; "Awe, they are actually giving players who already own A.S.E. an extra discount. That's really nice of them and definitely something they should do. But they didn't do it when A.S.A. launched."

For a brief moment I thought to myself; "Hmm, $26.99 actually isn't too bad now; and they're even respecting my commitment this time by giving me an extra discount. Maybe I will buy it after-all."

But then I remembered who the company was who owned A.S.A., and I remembered everything that they had done over the last year. Suddenly, the thought of buying A.S.A. for $26.99 made me feel sick, and I promptly refused to buy it. 

See, there was a time where I thought highly of the developers of Ark. There was a time, where I felt that I actually owed them money. That I owed them more than I had paid them for their game, because of all the many hours of wonderful fun that their game had given me.

If you don't believe me, then take a look at the based upon true events story that I've been writing and posting on the forums here in the Creative Chat forum. I'm up to Chapter 14 now and have Chapters 15 and 16 written but not posted.

During this time I purchased their new game "Atlas" without hesitation as soon as it was launched because I wanted to support the studio and their development of more content and because I felt I owed it to them to give them more money. (An action that turned out to be something of a mistake considering that only 1 year later I could have purchased the game for 1/5 the price I paid.)

However, I no longer feel that way. Quite entirely the opposite. And I doubt I'll ever feel that way again. Especially if they insist upon going this cash-grab P2W route. 

[trucososo]

the pyromane is literally the meme of: "copy my work, but dont make it that obvious. The work: ...". Its a fire shadowmane

[dadmonster]

Bought the stupid pack and not showing up in available mods. Any help or should I just try to dispute the charge an

d get my money back?

[Mado518]

Nice map