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ARK: Survival of the Fittest - Summer Cup, Development Kit & Going Forward


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Hello Survivors!

On July 24th 2015, we announced a competitive-battle mod for ARK, called “Survival of the Fittest”!

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A lot has changed since that announcement, what first started out as an internal mod side-project, grew into a publicly released Total Conversion, and eventually became its own standalone client - ARK: SotF has seen plenty of changes over the past year and today we’re going to discuss the future of this game mode. But before we go into that, some congratulations is in order!

The 2016 Summer Cup

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The past week, 31 Survivors (one unfortunately was not able to go!) flew out to compete in the first ever official SotF LAN Tournament. The teams which qualified were Kitty Cats, Kappa Pride, Beliebers, Get Out The Way, Los Bandoleros, PsychoSocial, The Rejects, Grabuge, plus local Chinese teams D.K and ZG. The ten teams took to the Island and battled it out across an epic three-game series.

The first game was an intense match filled with a ton of action, with teams proving that they were capable of performing on a LAN environment. KappaPride’s Deki really showed off his fantastic gunslingers which a large number of solo kills using the pistol. The game became very close at the end with Turbo pulling off some clutch moves to try to even up the odds. The game ended with the Chinese teams securing the top two positions and ZG taking it on most kills.

The second game proved just to be as exciting with a ton of blood being spilled. The Survivor League teams wanted to send a message that they were here to play for real, with the winners of the previous game immediately lost two players in an early skirmish. As the game went on it was clear that there were a number of tribes who could take the match. Kitty Cats were successful in taming the Broodmother and used it to massive effectiveness instantly as they thwarted the incoming attack from Beliebers! Ultimately it ended in a large 5-way tie with Kitty Cats taking the match with the most kills.

As we entered the final game, the judges tallied the scores and the Cup was anyone's to take. Tied for first place was local team ZG alongside European powerhouse, Kitty Cats. Tied for second place was local team D.K alongside the seasoned SotF tribe KappaPride, with third place currently being held by Beliebers (who were playing with 3 players!). During the early game it had looked like a lot of mistakes were occurring which led to some real up-hill battles. Perhaps it was a case of nerves, or just some bad luck. D.K Captain Ke Le was sending a message to the other tribes as he single-handedly took on, with a little help from his team, an entire tribe of 4 and came out victorious.

As we approached the platform and the final 6 - with all top 5 tribes still in the game, persevering to take the win. Of the 5 tribes, Beliebers was first to be eliminated - they put up a great fight but were taken out by ZG. Ralph was the last member alive from KappaPride and held up valiantly, playing the last moments of his life on foot before he was eaten by a Spinosaurus from the ZG tribe. The remaining tribes at this point were ZG and D.K both with 4 members, and Kitty Cats with 2. It seemed apparent that ZG and D.K were playing it safe and avoiding confrontation, as the two most powerful tribes it makes strategic sense to clear out the others first. Wilson from Kitty Cats was taken out, as team captain MOLNMAN had finished off the Get Out The Way tribe, but was inevitably killed himself. The game ended in a two-way tie between D.K and ZG both with four remaining members. At the end the judges tallied the scores and the kills and the results are as below:

3rd Place: D.K

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2nd Place: Kitty Cats

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1st Place: ZG

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If you haven’t had a chance to catch the games yet, we recommend you do - you can check the highlight streams over at www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

The tournament was a lot of fun to run, and it was awesome seeing all the strategies and skill demonstrated by our survivors. There were a lot of tense moments too with some players turning up the heat and really making a name for themselves on an international stage. Put simply: we got to witness some epic gameplay and unforgettable moments. We also learned a lot about the high-level game during these few days, as well as lot about hosting LAN matches and we’re very thankful to those of you who tuned into to support our survivors, the survivors for attending and competing, as well as those of you who were at the event itself whether as member of the team, supporting your friends, or watching the game in person.

Thank you Survivors, we could not do it without you!

SoTF and the Future!

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As we look to the future of SotF, we came to a decision: Survival of the Fittest will be brought back internally as part of the ARK: Survival Evolved package. For technical functionality it will still exist as its own application, and everyone who has thus-far played the game will continue to be able to play it without having to own ARK: Survival Evolved, but going forward it will be considered part of the ARK: Survival Evolved product group. There are some key reasons behind this decision, which we believe is the best option for the success of Survival of the Fittest and we’ll go through those points as follows:

Development Kit

The release of the Development Kit is the main reason for bringing back SotF internally. We have been pondering for a while how to release the kit without any restrictions on content and licensing, allowing SotF modders to freely take all the content from Survival Evolved as they wish. We wanted to ensure that modders would have freedom when working with the kit to create the mods that they wanted to see in SotF. This was more important to us than any other reason, and to accomplish this, we had to bring SotF back into the Survival Evolved product. We do not want to place any restrictions on you, this community has provided a lot of feedback in regards to SotF and there are a number of you who have expressed a desire to work on the game mode itself and take it to a new place. We wanted to ensure that you would be able to meet those desires and make SotF into the game you want to see, no limits. Furthermore, we’ll be kicking off a large-scale SotF Mod Contest shortly to help give the SotF creative community a boost to get out there and make cool stuff, stay tuned for details on that! You can download the SotF Development Kit here ( http://arkfiles.com/sotf/ARKDevKitSotF_v177.2.zip -- 50 GB! ) and start uploading your SotF Content to Steam Workshop right now! Feel free to take any and all content you want from Survival Evolved, let’s see some new Dinos in SotF! Tutorials and info on how to create content (Maps, Mods, Map Extensions, and Total Conversions) are available here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?70-ARK-Survival-Evolved

No Free To Play Monetisation

When a game like SotF is made free to play, there are still expenses - this can range from development work, server costs, running of tournaments, prizes and of course the opportunity cost. To ensure that SotF would remain a success and a sound choice, Wildcard would have had to put a lot of resources and time into learning how to become a ‘free to play’ developer. We would have had to learn how to monetize a free game, notoriously through the use of in-app purchases such as skins and other cosmetics. Ultimately, it’s clear this is not who we are, we like to make games, and to make the gameplay fun. We don’t know much about monetization, and quite frankly we aren’t interested in hiring an economics team to take over that process, it is much more in our and your best interest for Wildcard to solely focus on the development of a game. We just aren’t cut out for free to play mechanics. With SotF being part of ARK: Survival Evolved, it’ll be able to draw from Survival Evolved resource pool directly, and enable us to continue operating the title.

Survivor League

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July’s Survivor League Final shall be taking place on Saturday, the 6th of August! It will take place at 11:00AM EST where the qualifying survivors across 3 tables will compete to be placed in July’s Survivor League, and earn a prize pool of over $65,000. 

You can check out the qualifying Survivor’s here:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/

The games shall be hosted on www.twitch.tv/survivtheark and casted by non-other than typeForced! We hope to see you guys tune in for the exciting games!

Survivor League will be continuing throughout August, however due to some major gameplay changes made in the last few days, we will resetting the League’s ELO for August. This means that players current scores will reset and players will need to compete against on the ladder to reclaim their rankings. You can check out the most recent changes by reading our patch-notes thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/407530/discussions/0/365163686069351564/

Naughty or Nice

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It’s coming back! We’re going to prepare the epic 100v100 ‘Naughty or Nice’ battle-mode as a SotF “Total Conversion”, incorporating all the latest updates made to SotF - it will be open-source so modders can take it further if they wish. We’re hoping to release the TC by the end of August and host a gamers’ Charity Match sometime in September, to which all the qualifying members of August’s Survivors League are invited to participate! We had a lot of good feedback about our last, and there has been a lot of request for when the game mode will be making its reappearance, just to let you know - we’re on it guys! And yes, the developers will compete, and get our butts kicked ;)

TLDR

Right now here’s what we are certain of:

  • The SotF Development Kit will be released today, without restrictions due to this change and this means that there will be no restrictions on modders. 
  • For this to happen without content license restrictions (take whatever you want from Survival Evolved and put it into SotF!), we’re bringing back SotF Internally into the main-game’s product group again, and it will no longer be a separate “Free to Play” title.
  • We will continue to support and encourage modders through their developing endeavors to see where they can take SotF. Details on the first SotF Mod Contest will be announced soon!
  • Survival of the Fittest will be maintained as a playable game mode internally. If there are issues with the game, we will resolve them. If we’re able to make performance updates due to optimisation work done on the main game, SotF will also receive them. Major content upgrades to SotF will be pending further expansion of the team, and the development kit will continue be updated with content from ARK: Survival Evolved (which can be directly copied into SotF by modders).
  • Console development of SotF (PS4 and Xbox One) will be placed on hold so we can take a step back and see how these changes pan out in the long term, without making any hasty decisions about ARK: SotF.
  • The 100v100 ‘Naughty or Nice’ event is making a comeback in September!
  • Summer Cup was a lot of fun - thank you to everyone who attended and all the fans who watched it live from China! Hope you enjoyed it too! 
  • Stay tuned for longer-term announcements about future regional tournaments.

These changes will be taking place immediately. It is very important for us to see how SotF progresses and we want to make sure we’re making the right choices. We understand that these changes are quite big and will impact the future of game, but hope you can understand our reasons to do so and will continue to support the game mode you love. We are very excited to see what the release of the Development Kit will bring to SotF and where creative players will take it -- if you have some balancing or gameplay ideas, or simply want to see more creatures in the game, you can now make them happen!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team.


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9 minutes ago, IcedAllosaur said:

Thanks guys for the dev kit! So this means creatures already in core Ark like the Allosaurus and Gallimimus can be imported in?

Yes, you can indeed copy over all the assets from the regular ARK: Survival Evolved Dev Kit as you wish, they're just drag-and-drop between the two DevKits. I'm expecting a Titanosaurus Mod for ARK: SotF in 3....2.....1....!

OK fine, I'll go ahead and add the Titanosaurus Mod now :P 

Cheers,
Jeremy

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Hmm interesting so now SOTF is no longer free to play what then for the people qualified for next weeks tournament who haven't bought SE ?

I have to be honest guys sotf has been entirely miss managed from the start and it looks like this is either another rushed drastic move to "fix" the game or at this point admitting defeat and turning it back into a MOD no one played outside of the wildcard "events". Its a shame and honestly its one you guys need look internally for, the mod attracted a peak of 4000 players a PEAK of that hell that's less than 10% of the current SE population and has had ZERO outreach to the other "king of the hill" communities, where is the dedicated person to actually market this game and push the 65k being given away ? I saw nothing out of wildcard, hell the first season was entirely offline with vast swathes of the top 10 being removed on the final day for teaming/cheating. Your own twitch channel was still linking to a year old out of date SOTF post on steam, even during China cup how can no one internally notice these huge details ? I guess that's it a tip of the iceberg thing if you miss these huge details then it shows the eyes were never really "on the ball" with sotf to begin with. (click https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark > click SOTF > a year old announcement is what awaits before the game was even a mod, or offering cash prizes, this channel is the "main hub" for wildcard and they cant even update a link ?? yikes)

This game had a wealth of potential, it could have been there as something unique and it was slowly getting there slowly (just not in terms of player numbers) if you guys could have stopped making reactionary changes based on playoff games the meta itself would have developed over time but your constant instance on making these large scale reactionary changes despite these things being a CONSTANT issue day to day/week to week just smacked of not giving much of a crap unless you had 2000 people in your channel complaining about it.

As for the elo reset, huh ? I get now the game is becoming a mod again (I guess ?) it makes sense as a lot of players will probably be free to play players and therefore will be stuck in the limbo of being on the ladder but not being able to play. You will never entice new players into the game if every single month the guy in his first game is getting absolutely ragdolled by previous top 10/40 players. elo should start to separate people by skill (to some degree) it should allow newer players to play against similar skilled players, every single month there is a week / 10 days of those players getting absolutely SMASHED out of sight, how many of them after 4-5 losses in a row do you think ever come back ? if the high ELO players could be kept away from them (no benefit in joining a 1500 lobby and a lot to lose) kind of like it is right now those newer players might actually get the chance to play and enjoy the game.  Of course you could always force people to play a certain amount of "unraked" games or "unofficial" games before you can join ranked but that seems like it might be a fair bit of effort and that clearly seems to be lacking on the sotf front.

Also who is deciding on balance, why is no one actually engaged with because I know a fair section of the top 20-40 SOTF FFA players and nearly all were absolutely mystified with the removal of the shield, why do you not want to have multiple options to win games ? why do you refuse to let people tech to compete ? just from a FFA point of view its just as much of an investment to level a rex and tame it as it is to tech up so why are there constantly reduced options for those choosing to tech ?

Tech aside why have you decided to make the spino absolutely useless ? it had its place and it and the rex did quite a good dance of balance while the rex was more powerful in a straight up fight the spino was better at other things (running down players etc) and if it got its positioning right could indeed take out a Rex with a smart player, now the thing is useless, like carno level useless, why do you want LESS variation and skill in the game ? who decided on these balance changes ? who are they engaging with in the community before making the sweeping changes that no one actually sees as a problem ? and why do you do these things but let other things that ARE a problem linger on ? why is the metal shield gone but every FFA drop still has silica pearls, obsidian and BLOODY METAL ARROWS ??? why are these even a priority over working on dino pathing ? (oh hello you tamed 3 rex's say goodbye to 2 of them in the forest the first time they meet a small boulder).

What was needed was less money thrown away for no return every month, take some of that money and employ someone who lives/breathes SOTF get them a marketing budget and a few anti cheat admins coupled with a "report this death/player" button in game clean up the rampant teaming and cheating, get someone actually pushing this game with huge monthly prizes to the other king of the hill communities and give us (the players) someone who actually TALKS to us, not like season where we had to wait what 5  ? 7 ? days to find out if there was even going to be a July survivor league and if ELO was being reset. Though this announcement really has the feeling of you guys giving up on it now...

It makes me really quite sad to see the death by a thousand cuts of a game with such potential it really does, I hope you guys at wildcard can actually work out what you want to do with this game because it still seems like its all drifting in the wind here, surely you KNEW about the licencing issues before you took this game to standalone and free to play, if not who the hell is responsible for this sort of stuff internally ?

yours, a very sad Stiffler

 

 

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38 minutes ago, thestiffler said:

Hmm interesting so now SOTF is no longer free to play what then for the people qualified for next weeks tournament who haven't bought SE ?

 

1 hour ago, Jat said:

As we look to the future of SotF, we came to a decision: Survival of the Fittest will be brought back internally as part of the ARK: Survival Evolved package. For technical functionality it will still exist as its own application, and everyone who has thus-far played the game will continue to be able to play it without having to own ARK: Survival Evolved, but going forward it will be considered part of the ARK: Survival Evolved product group.

 

 

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Just now, thestiffler said:

so how does that work, everyone who has free to play sotf now has ark SE too ? its just not explained other than "its all going to be ok"

Of course they won't have SE too, that would be silly. I'm sure they will still be able to continue to access it the same way they always have, as long as they never uninstall it maybe.

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2 minutes ago, GamerPerfection said:

Of course they won't have SE too, that would be silly. I'm sure they will still be able to continue to access it the same way they always have, as long as they never uninstall it maybe.

right well that's interesting, a guy uninstalled it last week, or reformatted his pc and now has to buy SE to play it ? all those people who downloaded and played a few games will have it free ? but some wont ? this is a shambles I'm afraid.

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1 minute ago, thestiffler said:

right well that's interesting, a guy uninstalled it last week, or reformatted his pc and now has to buy SE to play it ? all those people who downloaded and played a few games will have it free ? but some wont ? this is a shambles I'm afraid.

You did read the last word I wrote in my post right? You understand the meaning of that word?

I get that you aren't happy with the changes, and I get that the information given isn't clear yet on how this is going to work, but you seem to be making a lot of fuss over something you don't yet understand how it is going to work.

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Just now, GamerPerfection said:

You did read the last word I wrote in my post right? You understand the meaning of that word?

I get that you aren't happy with the changes, and I get that the information given isn't clear yet on how this is going to work, but you seem to be making a lot of fuss over something you don't yet understand how it is going to work.

Why bother posting at all if you have nothing to tell us ? "well I don't know but it might work like this" helps no one

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Just now, thestiffler said:

Why bother posting at all if you have nothing to tell us ? "well I don't know but it might work like this" helps no one

I did. First I pointed out the fact that those that have SOTF already will still be able to play, because you clearly didn't read all the information in the OP.

Then I told you that it would be silly to think that anyone that currently has the free SOTF would get SE for free, because that's a no brainer that that wouldn't happen.

I'm sorry if pointing things out to you has added to your salt levels.

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Well... what do i see? I see devs have given up. The bad news

They ensure hopes into community by devkit. I guess thats the good news. Get free hands and reward them if they will make it work. like it was in the beginning

 

The truth is - it was an experiment and it has failed because 3 ppl cant run project this king and this big properly. I have already experienced something like that when Nosgoth was closed (and at least devs were really working on it). 

Even if this will die out eventually it wasnt in vain - a lot of people became succsessful cause of this (well, more than 2 ofc). 

As for the elo reset... i dont care. Well it wold've been fun to play from Republic of China with 150+ ping in september (considering i had 40+ on eu server last tournament), but its not worth grinding XD.... Maybe FFA. And tame 5 rexes constantly evading any non-tame fights cause of ping... not my kind of challenge. 

 

I want you consider one thing though. I am a russian. Russian gamers are generally greedy for free games, especially when you can get some cash (and this is big for our exchange rates nowadays - even 800$ will give a student two months of luxurious life). But what do i see? How many russian players in leaderboards? Me, Razorbeard... um... thats it? How many of us playing it at all? In 3 months i get known 3 ppl and saw about.. well 15 i guess? You can say this is unplayable by low-end pc, but i have a frient who managed to play with 650ti on board just fine. This is unknown in Russia, although Ark generally is popular. Just saying. I even installed this only cause i wanted to buy SE and that seemed like a nice demo. 

 

I could finish this by saying that CS was originally a half-life mod, but... this could be  too big for fans to handle. Peace and prosperity

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4 minutes ago, GamerPerfection said:

I did. First I pointed out the fact that those that have SOTF already will still be able to play, because you clearly didn't read all the information in the OP.

Then I told you that it would be silly to think that anyone that currently has the free SOTF would get SE for free, because that's a no brainer that that wouldn't happen.

I'm sorry if pointing things out to you has added to your salt levels.

I should have worded that one line of my couple of hundred word post crossing multiple topics a bit better this is true, but your snarky reply to that one single thing and subsequent pretty appalling attitude is awesome from a community moderator and your dismissive attitude towards legitimate concerns about this game shows how endemic this attitude is among wildcard clearly.

I mean you do get when you give opinions on here with the fact that your a "moderator" its quite easy to assume you're speaking for wildcard or at least representing them no ?

 

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This seems like a pretty solid decision, and from the streams I have watched I think SoTF is a very exciting game mode. I am eager for this to come out on Xbox, but the decision to watch and wait sounds pretty good to me. (Just please don't make console SoTF vaperware.)

P.S.(You don't need an excuse to not be a free to play game, because there is little excuse for micro transactions.)

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1 hour ago, thestiffler said:

right well that's interesting, a guy uninstalled it last week, or reformatted his pc and now has to buy SE to play it ? all those people who downloaded and played a few games will have it free ? but some wont ? this is a shambles I'm afraid.

It seems pretty straight forward to me, if you have it on steam then it wouldn't matter if you uninstalled the game. Once its in your library you have to game. I don't really understand the confusion about it personally.

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1 hour ago, thestiffler said:

I should have worded that one line of my couple of hundred word post crossing multiple topics a bit better this is true, but your snarky reply to that one single thing and subsequent pretty appalling attitude is awesome from a community moderator and your dismissive attitude towards legitimate concerns about this game shows how endemic this attitude is among wildcard clearly.

I mean you do get when you give opinions on here with the fact that your a "moderator" its quite easy to assume you're speaking for wildcard or at least representing them no ?

 

LOL, DAMN you're not too bright, are you. The mod got "dismissive" because (s)he should not need to explain everything step by step to you, like you're a little baby. Your huge complaint up there.... you're talking about the moderator looking bad? Lmao, look at yourself!

 

The original post explains everything. Those who have SOTF will be able to keep SOTF. It's in your steam library. You can't remove something from your steam library, even if the game is removed from Steam (unless you ask Steam/Valve to remove it from your library, I believe.) Again--- THE POST SAYS THIS!

And then you were rude to the mod. The mod doesn't need to tell you anything. The post tells you everything you need to know about everything that is happening. Anything it doesn't mention? Not your business. Everything it mentions covers everything you need to know. Your rant up top makes it sound like you think you'd have done a better job of SOTF--- trust me, you would not have.

 

Go take your salt somewhere else. SOTF is not being shut down and deleted. As the post says. Your inability to read does not give you an excuse to complain and get salty to a mod who did nothing but try and clear things up for you.

 

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2 hours ago, thestiffler said:

Hmm interesting so now SOTF is no longer free to play what then for the people qualified for next weeks tournament who haven't bought SE ?

I have to be honest guys sotf has been entirely miss managed from the start and it looks like this is either another rushed drastic move to "fix" the game or at this point admitting defeat and turning it back into a MOD no one played outside of the wildcard "events". Its a shame and honestly its one you guys need look internally for, the mod attracted a peak of 4000 players a PEAK of that hell that's less than 10% of the current SE population and has had ZERO outreach to the other "king of the hill" communities, where is the dedicated person to actually market this game and push the 65k being given away ? I saw nothing out of wildcard, hell the first season was entirely offline with vast swathes of the top 10 being removed on the final day for teaming/cheating. Your own twitch channel was still linking to a year old out of date SOTF post on steam, even during China cup how can no one internally notice these huge details ? I guess that's it a tip of the iceberg thing if you miss these huge details then it shows the eyes were never really "on the ball" with sotf to begin with. (click https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark > click SOTF > a year old announcement is what awaits before the game was even a mod, or offering cash prizes, this channel is the "main hub" for wildcard and they cant even update a link ?? yikes)

This game had a wealth of potential, it could have been there as something unique and it was slowly getting there slowly (just not in terms of player numbers) if you guys could have stopped making reactionary changes based on playoff games the meta itself would have developed over time but your constant instance on making these large scale reactionary changes despite these things being a CONSTANT issue day to day/week to week just smacked of not giving much of a crap unless you had 2000 people in your channel complaining about it.

As for the elo reset, huh ? I get now the game is becoming a mod again (I guess ?) it makes sense as a lot of players will probably be free to play players and therefore will be stuck in the limbo of being on the ladder but not being able to play. You will never entice new players into the game if every single month the guy in his first game is getting absolutely ragdolled by previous top 10/40 players. elo should start to separate people by skill (to some degree) it should allow newer players to play against similar skilled players, every single month there is a week / 10 days of those players getting absolutely SMASHED out of sight, how many of them after 4-5 losses in a row do you think ever come back ? if the high ELO players could be kept away from them (no benefit in joining a 1500 lobby and a lot to lose) kind of like it is right now those newer players might actually get the chance to play and enjoy the game.  Of course you could always force people to play a certain amount of "unraked" games or "unofficial" games before you can join ranked but that seems like it might be a fair bit of effort and that clearly seems to be lacking on the sotf front.

Also who is deciding on balance, why is no one actually engaged with because I know a fair section of the top 20-40 SOTF FFA players and nearly all were absolutely mystified with the removal of the shield, why do you not want to have multiple options to win games ? why do you refuse to let people tech to compete ? just from a FFA point of view its just as much of an investment to level a rex and tame it as it is to tech up so why are there constantly reduced options for those choosing to tech ?

Tech aside why have you decided to make the spino absolutely useless ? it had its place and it and the rex did quite a good dance of balance while the rex was more powerful in a straight up fight the spino was better at other things (running down players etc) and if it got its positioning right could indeed take out a Rex with a smart player, now the thing is useless, like carno level useless, why do you want LESS variation and skill in the game ? who decided on these balance changes ? who are they engaging with in the community before making the sweeping changes that no one actually sees as a problem ? and why do you do these things but let other things that ARE a problem linger on ? why is the metal shield gone but every FFA drop still has silica pearls, obsidian and BLOODY METAL ARROWS ??? why are these even a priority over working on dino pathing ? (oh hello you tamed 3 rex's say goodbye to 2 of them in the forest the first time they meet a small boulder).

What was needed was less money thrown away for no return every month, take some of that money and employ someone who lives/breathes SOTF get them a marketing budget and a few anti cheat admins coupled with a "report this death/player" button in game clean up the rampant teaming and cheating, get someone actually pushing this game with huge monthly prizes to the other king of the hill communities and give us (the players) someone who actually TALKS to us, not like season where we had to wait what 5  ? 7 ? days to find out if there was even going to be a July survivor league and if ELO was being reset. Though this announcement really has the feeling of you guys giving up on it now...

It makes me really quite sad to see the death by a thousand cuts of a game with such potential it really does, I hope you guys at wildcard can actually work out what you want to do with this game because it still seems like its all drifting in the wind here, surely you KNEW about the licencing issues before you took this game to standalone and free to play, if not who the hell is responsible for this sort of stuff internally ?

yours, a very sad Stiffler

Hopefully I can address this in a way you'll find satisfactory, or at least so you understand where we're coming from with our decision to port Survival of the Fittest back into Survival Evolved.

The players who have already qualified for the event will likely already have SotF in their steam libraries, if for some reason that is not the case - they can get in touch with me and I will sort it out for them, as the invites have already been sent out for the next event.

That's a reasonable opinion to have, though would disagree on this particular choice being a rushed or drastic move to 'fix' the game. Clearly what we've been doing hasn't been working so well and there seems to be a lot of players in the SotF community who have their own ideas about how they think it should be run, that have been vocalised too - and we want to give them the opportunity to set forth and turn SotF into what it should be, without restriction. It's not a 'mod' - it's still a standalone game, just a part of the core-version so that it's still able to be funded. 

The link with our twitch is a fair point, and I'll get that sorted right now but also that's just something that's slipped under the radar, those links likely haven't been checked in a while since they were setup, mostly because the URLs tend not to change - however I'll link it directly to the standalone app in the Steam Store.

The game hasn't changed much since the standalone was first release, there have just been some gameplay and balance changes, the most notorious ones would be the changes to the ring - value changes itself are small and if players disagree with them, they have the ability to adjust it to what they think it should be. The balance was decided through watching games, speaking to members of the SotF community, the top players, as well as our own ideas on what we think would work. Again, if this isn't something you agree with - you're welcome to change it. A lot of the feedback does come from top players too, but again there are always going to be people who prefer something one way, and others another way. 

We want to provide you guys with the opportunity to take SotF in another direction. The direction we were taking it in, whilst we enjoyed it clearly wasn't working - and we still want to ensure that the game remains taken care of and funded, so we'll look after it in that sense, as well as make any critical changes that are necessary to the game design itself. If the game still has a lot of potential in your eyes, which we believe it does too - we just aren't quite sure where we want to take it, so we're stepping back - then grab the Development Kit and take a stab at it. If things kick off and a mod creator is looking for more support from us to taking it to the next level, we're definitely open to that and are willing to work with them to achieve it.

The licencing issue stems from SotF development vs SE development, with the initial plan - it would have just been a SotF kit, what would have been available, would have been limited, until SotF received it - by doing this we're able to remove all limitations and players are able to mod without restriction, do what they want, use all the content that we have available in the main game.

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27 minutes ago, Jat said:

Hopefully I can address this in a way you'll find satisfactory, or at least so you understand where we're coming from with our decision to port Survival of the Fittest back into Survival Evolved.

The players who have already qualified for the event will likely already have SotF in their steam libraries, if for some reason that is not the case - they can get in touch with me and I will sort it out for them, as the invites have already been sent out for the next event.

That's a reasonable opinion to have, though would disagree on this particular choice being a rushed or drastic move to 'fix' the game. Clearly what we've been doing hasn't been working so well and there seems to be a lot of players in the SotF community who have their own ideas about how they think it should be run, that have been vocalised too - and we want to give them the opportunity to set forth and turn SotF into what it should be, without restriction. It's not a 'mod' - it's still a standalone game, just a part of the core-version so that it's still able to be funded. 

The link with our twitch is a fair point, and I'll get that sorted right now but also that's just something that's slipped under the radar, those links likely haven't been checked in a while since they were setup, mostly because the URLs tend not to change - however I'll link it directly to the standalone app in the Steam Store.

The game hasn't changed much since the standalone was first release, there have just been some gameplay and balance changes, the most notorious ones would be the changes to the ring - value changes itself are small and if players disagree with them, they have the ability to adjust it to what they think it should be. The balance was decided through watching games, speaking to members of the SotF community, the top players, as well as our own ideas on what we think would work. Again, if this isn't something you agree with - you're welcome to change it. A lot of the feedback does come from top players too, but again there are always going to be people who prefer something one way, and others another way. 

We want to provide you guys with the opportunity to take SotF in another direction. The direction we were taking it in, whilst we enjoyed it clearly wasn't working - and we still want to ensure that the game remains taken care of and funded, so we'll look after it in that sense, as well as make any critical changes that are necessary to the game design itself. If the game still has a lot of potential in your eyes, which we believe it does too - we just aren't quite sure where we want to take it, so we're stepping back - then grab the Development Kit and take a stab at it. If things kick off and a mod creator is looking for more support from us to taking it to the next level, we're definitely open to that and are willing to work with them to achieve it.

The licencing issue stems from SotF development vs SE development, with the initial plan - it would have just been a SotF kit, what would have been available, would have been limited, until SotF received it - by doing this we're able to remove all limitations and players are able to mod without restriction, do what they want, use all the content that we have available in the main game.

When will the ELO be reset?

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