Zeldei

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.

Double Post addressed below.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

ASA was always advertised as just ark with a graphical, UI, and QOL update. 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. Nothing wrong with paid DLC. Workers don't work for free and businesses aren't a charity. They need to show a profit. Takes money and time in manhours to update all the maps, much less create new content. No one is ripping you off. Bob's Tall Tales amounts to roughly 10 dollars per expansion, which you don't need to buy. The additions made are pretty good for only 10 dollars. As for ARK 2, a lot of people didn't care about it as it was advertised as "not ark as you know it." People wanted ARK, not ArkSouls.

Atlas isn't A studio wildcard product.

It is pushed back indefinitely. As in, there is no specified date. It is not even being remastered by Wildcard, but a different third party studio. So, I imagine it will come out after scorched earth at some point when it is ready. You will hear more about it as it comes to completion and they have something to report. I would guess around the time it was originally supposed to launch.

I can call out the complainers at any point since their entire argument is that everyone else is fragile and triggered while literally getting mad that animated characters are kissing. People lose the credibility to criticize others as snowflakes while being snowflakes. This ranks up there with the Christians who get mad if you say happy holidays or have cups that aren't the right shade of green and red.

There were already gay characters in the ark story though. Mei literally had a relationship with Diana. So, did you hate the original story too? It is almost like you weren't paying attention to the story for the last 8 years. So why complain now? The idea that others have delicate sensibilities being offended is ironic since you are literally the one being offended by two people kissing and a female lead. Talk about delicate feelings. How do you go through life always being so triggered? Your masculinity must be so fragile. This is a common theme of projection with Conservative people. They rage and get offended over the most mundane, trivial things that don't actually hurt them. You're literally buttmad that two girls kissed and have crafted a bizarre explanation of how the world is out to get you. You are the very group you are complaining about: the snowflakes who can't handle anything. Do you need a safe space where you never have to see people different from you? You can complain. No one said you can't. But not all complaints are rational. Some opinions, contrary to what you might believe, are both wrong and dumb. Being American on an American forum doesn't mean otherwise. You have the right to be a terrible person with bad ideas. Doesn't mean others can't call you out on being a terrible person with bad ideas. Imagine someone is offended by Christians. Should we never allow media to show Christians doing Christian things? That is your argument. In fact, we shouldn't let shows display interracial relationships either, I guess. That might offend conservatives too. No movie should ever being allowed to show people praying or wearing crosses, because that might offend someone. There is no end to how dumb this is.

I wonder what could be the issue, because I have experienced no change in FPS after the patch and I also don't experience the pixelation. Ironically, the patch made things better. I can finally move on from nvidia drivers from Oct 10 without crashing. I have been using ancient drivers out of necessity for months now. I am finally free. I run on a laptop with a Mobile RTX 4070, I7 13th gen and I don't seem to have a lot of the problems others have. Granted, I do have issues. Occasional crashes and the (now fixed) inability to use new drivers without crashing. But overall, the game has run really well on a mix of high/medium settings. They have even fixed the ridiculous disco strobe lighting with global illumination on high.

I didn't see it either. But right off the bat, months ago, I knew conservatives would hate it because Helena is a Lesbian. I was like "Man, they gonna complain about this to no end." What I didn't expect was people saying it is woke because the villains are all men. Or white. Like DILO do they want? To change the original story? One guy even complained that Helena's mom was protesting the Australian government for Aboriginal rights. That was woke too. I guess they should just all hold hands and love each other.

The complaints about woke are mind-blowing to me because no one ever really explains what would satisfy them short of simply never having characters that are either gay, female, or non-white. The presence of any one of those is enough to send conservatives into a tizzy of rage and persecution complex. Even though gay characters are a vanishingly small percentage of the total characters, it's still not enough. You say it should not exist in a cartoon, but why? We see relationships, love, and family issues all the time in historical children's media. No one bats an eye at it unless one of the characters is not the traditional view of love. It is like saying we shouldn't have interracial couples in media because it might offend people who hate other races. After all, anti-miscegenation laws were around much longer than interracial marriage was the norm. Should we protect children from ever seeing an asian guy with a white chick? Is that woke? Children are inundated with extreme violence, and a lot of people are fine with that. Bob got stabbed in the face. That's okay, but two women kissing is apparently traumatizing for children to handle. Even though it exists in the real world they live in. One commentor in a youtube video about the ARK series complained that all the villains are white men. Therefore it is woke. Like, what did he want? To make Nerva black? To make Rockwell female? Wouldn't that be race-sex swapping and thus also WOKE? Then he'd complain about that. So what's the deal? Following the story accurately would be too woke for him. Someone in another thread was hating the show and he admitted he didn't even see it. That is why so much of the complaints feel disingenuous. The wokeness complaints get so absurd that it's like people must not have ever paid attention to the ARK story in the past 8 years. If they did, they would know a character was already overtly gay. And the main hero characters were already female. Simply adhering to lore perfectly would still be woke! I feel like the real criticisms of the ARK animated series is that it destroys Rockwell's character completely. That's a real complaint. Not because the developers hate men, though. Diverging from the actual story was a mistake because certain characters no longer make sense. I am not targeting this at you. I am genuinely interested in what people really want. Just never having a gay character? Or a brown female? A 1/100 ratio? Should we race swap Nerva into a black female villain?

Too much complaing about woke lol You are too predictable.

I imagine asa is less popular for several reasons. Namely, it is just the island. And no real new content. It is the same thing people were doing prior, just with fewer maps. Remaster are something of a novelty without new vcontent loops. Also it is difficult to run.

I think the point being made is they don't kill you.

Well until it is resolved I would recommend a server. It works.