CyanicEmber Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 Wildcard made it perfectly clear from day one what their intentions regarding additional paid content were. They said, "no in-game monetization or microtransactions, but full expansion ARKS would be released post launch." (Paraphrase.) Development for Scorched Earth began in September of 2015, that's four months after Early Access release, and before the lawsuit was brought up. Wildcard has stated that it was their intention from the beginning to develop a DLC alongside the main game to be released a few months after the projected Vanilla release date of June 2016. What time of year is it? A few months after June of 2016. Scorched Earth was released precisely on schedule. The only reason things seem wonky is because Vanilla ended up taking longer than planned, while Scorched Earth did not. Rather than sit on their finished DLC they decided to release it for everyone to enjoy. There is no indication that they've lost interest in the main game or are going to stop development. Yes, update pace has slowed, but they said that would happen as they got closer to launch. It's not the result of misallocated assets. There was no decision made to reallocate the companies resources because of the lawsuit or anything like that. They didn't go off on a limb and randomly decide to work on something totally different. Your money was not mishandled, their is no breach of rules or contract, there was no contract, this was not an investment on the player's part. Wildcard has behaved ethically, and is continuing to do so. You cannot argue with facts. I bought the game at launch for $29.99, bought it for a friend later on at $19.99, and have now bought the expansion for $19.99. I love ARK. I want to see it succeed. And I honestly believe you are all making a mistake in judgment. You are not helping anyone by attacking them for a perceived sleight. This is not going to set the precedent for EA titles. Everything is fine. In fact, everything is great. I am really looking forward to WildCard's future. Please, don't continue this hostility. It's not justified. This was a huge misunderstanding, but just a misunderstanding. Nothing good can come of this. I wish everyone well. -Cyan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nim Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 I can understand a "misunderstanding," what I can't understand is how and why the devs: Allowed basically the entire community to believe that the desert biome would be both free and integrated into the Island map. Even if people did only assume this (and I only believed it because I was specifically told about it by other players, I didn't use the forums at the time), it's not irrational to be unhappy about being "led on" when the devs could have corrected the community on it OR even just said "don't assume that's how it will be." Haven't addressed the outrage of the community directly and openly instead of using more obscure outlets like twitch and twitter. I don't use or watch that poop, and neither do most other people. Just a small banner at the top of the forums and on the homepage linking to an article explaining the whole situation would do wonders to defuse the situation and make the community happy and feel guilty that they ever doubted the devs. Insist that this DLC content is "free except for the map." It's only Free*** meaning only players in singleplayer can freely spawn in whatever Scorched Earth content they want. Unofficial and dedicateds can only have DLC content if the owner/admins decide to give these things out, and even then they'd have to spawn in replacement resources for broken tools and such (and saddles when saddle durability becomes a thing), that is IF that's even possible. I was told by a friend who regularly swaps between The Island on our official PvE and an official PvE Scorched Earth that DLC resources do nothing for players who don't own the DLC, and as far as engrams go that is true. I can't learn any of the DLC engrams as I haven't bought SE. Don't think about how a DLC like this will affect their players, regardless of their good intentions. Update 264 made Ark unplayable for me. I could be on for at most 10 minutes before the entire game would crash. Patch 246.1 reduced the amount of crashing by a little but made the game even more unplayable in that my fps regularly goes to 0 (screen freezing) because the game itself stops responding in Task Manager. This even affects Steam. I can barely walk, can barely look around. I can barely feed my damn dinos. And then I crash. I already run the game in low memory mode. And I assumed this was Scorched Earth. Then I found out in the most obscure little thread (that I can't even find now when I want another look at it) that the devs redid textures. This isn't even in the patch notes. Communication is crucial! You don't have to reveal all your secrets to us, you don't have to ask nicely for permission to work on the game however you want and to work on whatever specific things you want. You. Just. Have. To. Communicate. Clearly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILuvTheAwesomeDevs Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 +1, every rager on this forum needs to see this, thank you for the awesome insight @CyanicEmber! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystalias Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 If this had come from a dev, I might feel different about things... maybe others would as well... The problem is, it didn't come from a developer, employee or even a community moderator... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rickyh24 Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 Shouldn't this thread be merged into the generic dlc thread like all the others created? thankfully my money wasnt misspent. No chance I give wildcard another penny until dedicateds and the main game work correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panteni87 Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 1 hour ago, Rickyh24 said: Shouldn't this thread be merged into the generic dlc thread like all the others created? thankfully my money wasnt misspent. No chance I give wildcard another penny until dedicateds and the main game work correctly. No... mostly the negative threads will be lumbed together... haven't you seen? The positive threads must be shown as much as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QuinnH Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 Preach! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyanicEmber Posted September 4, 2016 Author Share Posted September 4, 2016 7 hours ago, Mystalias said: If this had come from a dev, I might feel different about things... maybe others would as well... The problem is, it didn't come from a developer, employee or even a community moderator... I get that. Communication is not WildCard's strong point, even I'll admit that. If it means anything, I do have sources for everything I am saying and I can provide them if you'd like. I think it's at least worth noting that most of the team is at PAX. And honestly, I wish I could work for them. I'd do pretty much anything to get into game design. Sadly I just don't have the money for college and it's not the kind of thing people are generally willing to teach you... The only reasons I made this thread is because I love ARK and don't want to see rifts form in the community. I hope people will just consider what I'm saying, that's all I can ask for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vashshadow Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 they should have pushed back the damn dlc seeing how the game isnt finished its not hard to understand you dont put out dlc for a unfinished product Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRealTFreezy Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 2 hours ago, vashshadow said: they should have pushed back the damn dlc seeing how the game isnt finished its not hard to understand you dont put out dlc for a unfinished product But why would you want it sat on? They were working on this before they even pushed back the launch in June. They had a different team working on it from the get go. They finished on time and now theoretically have even more man power to work on the main game. Why as a community would we want them to sit on amazing and new content when it's done and ready to go? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystalias Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 There's sitting on it, and then there is having it be polished and have more added as the main game/map gets worked on. It costs them nearly nothing to have it sit on the back burner, but now that it is out it will cost them additional time to support and fix it, in addition to having the risk of a change to the engine invalidating all their work. Further, if this release was intended to test the inter-ark travel system, wouldn't it make sense to get it in front of as many testers as possible by having the first one be free or at a low cost? ($5-$10?). If anything, people without the dlc should be able to jump to compatible arks. (IE: Island to Center, Island to Island, Center to Center, Multi to Single player, etc...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyanicEmber Posted September 4, 2016 Author Share Posted September 4, 2016 34 minutes ago, Mystalias said: There's sitting on it, and then there is having it be polished and have more added as the main game/map gets worked on. It costs them nearly nothing to have it sit on the back burner, but now that it is out it will cost them additional time to support and fix it, in addition to having the risk of a change to the engine invalidating all their work. Further, if this release was intended to test the inter-ark travel system, wouldn't it make sense to get it in front of as many testers as possible by having the first one be free or at a low cost? ($5-$10?). If anything, people without the dlc should be able to jump to compatible arks. (IE: Island to Center, Island to Island, Center to Center, Multi to Single player, etc...) Jesse said during one of the PAX broadcasts that they would be able to roll some of the optimizations and experience they gained from the new map back into The Island. So it may turn out very beneficial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
particlezero Posted September 5, 2016 Share Posted September 5, 2016 Pay to win, early access DLC. The fact is the main game is in a sorry state and needs so much work that could have been done instead of this nonsense. Scorched Earth is a cash grab and it sounds like they are planning on doing more of it. All of you fanboys defending this are only perpetuating this type of behavior and believe me, we will now be seeing more of this in the future. These devs just took the gaming industry down another peg and so many gamers are gleefully accepting it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrysis Posted September 5, 2016 Share Posted September 5, 2016 18 minutes ago, particlezero said: Pay to win, early access DLC. The fact is the main game is in a sorry state and needs so much work that could have been done instead of this nonsense. Scorched Earth is a cash grab and it sounds like they are planning on doing more of it. All of you fanboys defending this are only perpetuating this type of behavior and believe me, we will now be seeing more of this in the future. These devs just took the gaming industry down another peg and so many gamers are gleefully accepting it. And a counter to you in the same tone that you're using is to mention that most of the people complaining are upset just because they are being asked to pay for new content and they aren't getting everything for free. I guarantee that if all of this content had been free, there wouldn't be the same amount of vitriol in the forums. The are fixing the bugs. Bug fixes are a continuous process. They're not going to suddenly stop fixing bugs. In the mean time, they haven't taken any dinosaurs off of the original map, have they? No. The rest of us who feel we should support the developers will enjoy the new map and mechanics. The only legitimate argument I've seen is that some of the people who want to play in the Island don't want to mix types (which is a fair argument), but I haven't seen enough of them posting to ask for separate servers for that purpose. If you don't like the new map, that's fine. I can respect that. Don't buy it. But for those of us who think it's worthwhile to send some money to the studio for a whole bunch of new content and to keep the studio running, please don't denigrate us by calling us "fanboys" or something similar. We have opinions equally valid to yours. YOU think that this is a cash grab. That's fine. You can make your point in less volatile terms. *I* happen to think that developers need money to pay the bills, and that this is a non-trivial amount of new content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystalias Posted September 5, 2016 Share Posted September 5, 2016 3 hours ago, CyanicEmber said: Jesse said during one of the PAX broadcasts that they would be able to roll some of the optimizations and experience they gained from the new map back into The Island. So it may turn out very beneficial. They need to post things like that on this site (or Steam) where everyone can see them. I only go browsing their twitter feed when someone says something important was posted there... I have been getting of the opinion that they need to replace TheIsland with something rebuilt from the ground up. As a starting map, it works alright, but as the player progresses they should be able to go to new maps (Using that inter-Ark teleporter) and experience new things. Maybe developing these offshoots will give them some ideas for that. For those not buying the DLC, I do think they need to enable the transfer to other servers option to let us switch to maps we are eligible for. (Island to Center, Island to Island, Center to Center, Multi to Single Player) They want this feature well tested right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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