RealNomad

People are always making new stuff. If paid mods arent a thing people will still create mods and share them with the community. As soon as money becomes involved though it will all go to poop. The revenue split is really atrocious too. If the goal is to pay creators for their work then Wildcard and snail should pay them not us. ARK doesnt belong to us. It's their IP, and mods add value to that IP. Why should we be the ones to pay for that added value? They are the ones making an issue out of it as well.

If paid mods are a thing in ASA then dont expect them to be anywhere near as popular. Just think for a second about how many mods you have to install on an average unofficial in ASE. How many people do ya think are gonna play if you gotta pay 20-30 bucks for mods just to play a server?

I too, fail to see how this does anything. If they are trying to build trust, this approach isn't gonna work. After being stabbed in the back repeatedly by Snail and Wildcard backtracking on everything they originally said about the remaster and probably lying to us under Snail's orders, im not exactly begging for the chance to put my trust into yet another company. I am just so freaking tired of the abuse. The having to watch every single hobby I have ever known or cared about destroyed in the worst possible ways by companies who dont give a poop. Its depressing, and ive had about as much as I can stand. (and I say that as someone who bought the game on the first day of Early access in June of 2015, almost 8 years ago).

Fat chance of that happening. I have no intention of shutting up about this until Wildcard gets the message and goes back to Mod.io. We dont want paied mods anywhere near this game. I cant imagine a faster way to kill unofficial servers and by extension the game as a whole than charging for mods.

Galaxy brain indeed. Now they get 60 for ASA and then later another 70 for Ark 2.. I can not believe the level of arrogance I am seeing here. It almost feels punitive in a way.

Il make this very simple. If ASA goes through overwolf, I will not be buying it. Also I hope you are going to support FidelityFX as well. Im sure you are no doubt aware the stupid games Nvidia is playing with their product pricing and lack of VRAM. Many people are being pushed to AMD and Intel.

1: They said it would be free 2: We havent seen a single frame of actual gameplay for Ark 2. We are in essence being asked to pay for a game we havent seenj ANYTHING for even though the direction Ark 2 is going in will likely not be popular with the playerbase. Souls like combat? Forced 3rd person? No thanks. 3: they are breaking a product we already paied for so they can sell us everything all over again. This is borderline illegal what they are doing. It would be like Ford coming up to your car and intentionally totaling it to force you into buying the newest model year. 4: Overwolf. Excuse me while i go vomit. 5: Ps4 players are absolutely screwed.

One fine little detail im sure most of you missed is that Snail wants to bring paid mods to console with overwolf. Overwolf are known degenerates, their mod manager is as invasive as it gets, and the terms of use for it make that point very clear. Overwolf is known to also cause performance issues so there's that too. If overwolf gets crammed down our throats on PC and paid mods become a thing through them I will not be buying it. If I choose to support a mod creator I want for them to get ALL of the money i donate. Not 70% of it. Not 80% of it. ALL of it. And If I choose to support a mod creator, it is MY choice. Not theirs. These scum are trying to turn our passion into their product and that ENRAGES me.

You wont ever hear the truth from the horses mouth in this case. Snail WILL retaliate against WC if they tell the truth for this travesty. Snail inc. has been caught red handed, Cheating in their own game, preventing bugs favored by them from being fixed, and even lying to investors in the last investor call. We as a community need to be looking at ways to force Snail games to sell the IP. Wildcard are blameless in this. They are victims just as we are of these parasites. We can accomplish this by causing the stock to crash. Go on twitter and instagram and spread the news that Snail Inc, a Chinese Communist Party owned company is forcing the developers for this popular game to tell outright lies to the community and break a product we payed for and force us to rebuy it. If anyone has connections to financial journalism outlets be sure to use those connections. Get popular twitch streamers and youtube channels talking about this. Currently US Congress is also considering the tiktok ban bill, Chinese tech is a hot topic of discussion right now, so contact your congress reps and make it clear to them that we do not want chinese owned companies or companies with ANY connections to the CCP (even trace connections.) being able to operate at all in the tech space, including gaming. I believe that Wildcard, while not perfect, do want what is best for the game and for the community. I believe they are good people and we need to help them separate from Snail if we want Wildcard and the game to survive. Together we can make a difference. Even if we fail it is better to have at least tried than to sit around and just take it. We must succeed or Wildcard is going lose agency over their company to snail eventually, the core values of Wildcard will be eroded and we will lose the game we love forever to the corporate greed of a publicly traded company just like so many others. We have all seen this scenario play out over and over and over with other companies and I am tired of watching everything I love and am passionate about die because of Wall Street.

This is Snail Inc. being shady as hell. It's not Wildcard. Snail also willfully lied to Investors in the last Investor Call. Not only are they truly a shady company but what they have done is Illegal. I really hope that Wildcard can break free from them. I firmly believe that Snail are parasites living off of Arks Success while contributing nothing positive to it. Wildcard deserves better than these jerks.

Yeah we will have to see. I do plan on giving Ark 2 a chance so im not going to make any prejudgments about its quality. For people who detest souls like combat the choice will be very simple I imagine. I don't mind the combat so much if it is appropriate for the game (I feel that it doesnt belong in ark), and so, I dont imagine I will be quit Ark for Ark 2 either. The fact that they are porting Ark to UE 5 gives me some hope that wildcard might at some point rework ark 1 and bring in some major improvements. We need seasons (summer autumn winter and spring), Moon phases (some nights darker than others), improved weather (thunderstorms, wind storms that make flying really difficult and blow you around, Blizzards and coldsnaps for the Snow biomes and winter. Season dependent of course.) Improved dino Ai and that hunting behavior. Heck, bring over a bunch of the improvements from Ark 2 (vaulting and improved environment traversal? Yes please!) Maybe the terrain could become more treacherous when its wet during or after a storm, or iced over. Disable gamma commands on official and kill off the texture packs or whatever people use to remove water, vegetation ect and almost have x-ray vision. No more cheating! We desperately need a complete PvP rebalance as well. Explosives, mechs ect become a hell of a lot harder to make. Structures have way more health and are harder to destroy. Turrets are far more effective at tearing apart soakers. No more 3rd person C-4ing. No more CP and polymer factories. Lets slow the game down a bit and bring back some risk to raiding people. Additionally, for many years now, attackers have had an overwhelming advantage against defenders which forces people to live in caves and ratholes to give themselves a chance of successfully mounting a defense against raiders. The changes I am suggesting here are to even the playing field as much as possible. Ark, very early in EA, from 2015 EA release up to early 2016 (pre Version 236 I believe, which brought the introduction of the beaver and beaver dams), despite all of its issues and not being feature complete was a better experience than what we have now, being far more balanced. Reaching goals was far more rewarding as well, and that's not my rose tinted glasses talking! I remember all too well the incredible amounts of lag, performance problems, crashing and bugs the game had back then, not to mention breeding when it first came out was one of the most grueling and painful experiences I have ever had in ark, heck, I would even say in video games in general. Story time! My first attempt at breeding was a Quetzal (having a Quetzal at all was a an enormous deal back then. ) Being a solo player on official, I had to stay awake for the entire baby phase and well into the juvenile phase to ensure it didn't starve while I slept since there were no cryopods or refrigerated troughs. This meant once it hatched I was awake for DAYS straight feeding this thing. I don't have any words to accurately describe how painful it was, or my level of elation when it was grown. You had to work really hard for even the smallest things, and that hardship meant you appreciated your progression so much more. The game mostly lacks this kind of hardship now, and as a result, progressing does not yield anywhere close to the level of satisfaction as it did then. Anyway, story aside, Stuff like that would be absolutely incredible to see for Ark 1. They would fundamentally improve the game in almost every possible way. My apologies for the tangent, I just got to remembering the way the game used to be very early on and missing it.

Hi Joe! Personally I don't even mind Souls combat, I really enjoyed Elden Ring for example. But for me this type of gameplay doesn't really belong in Ark. You wouldn't add souls like combat to Pokemon right (just an example)? I know WIldcard is just trying to be creative, and I can respect that especially since the broader game industry doesn't take very many risks anymore. Ark 1 is good already though. Some of the improvements they have talked about in ark 2 like the creatures actually hunting rather than just having radars are definitely good. Really good actually. I just dont think they need to reinvent the wheel. Improve on the original formula that makes ark 1 so good in the first place and ark 2 would be a hit. Rework the code, improve the game design, fix bugs and exploits which they cant currently fix, that new hunting mechanic they are talking about creatures having, ect.

I hope it goes over well, but if im being honest the more and more i Read about it the more worried it makes me. I've been a part of this community since the very start. Day 1 of Early Access. That's a long time, and despite all the bumps we have had over time, watching the game develop into the success that it is has been a positive journey that has given me thousands of hours of gameplay. That said, for me at least, Ark is a survival sandbox with dinosaurs. Thats the Identity of the IP for me. I play ark because thats what I like. If I wanted to play dark souls I would play Dark souls. If I wanted to play Monster Hunter, I would play Monster Hunter ect ect. Ark offers something very unique to the survival sandbox genre that no other game really does. So my big concern here is that Ark 2 seems to be a huge departure from what Ark is and from that Identity we have all grown to love as a community of going on 8 years now (man time sure flies). For me, even if Ark 2 is a good game, it still wont be Ark. I also worry about them leaning so heavily into a curated PvE experience. Even if it ends up being good, these types of games have a shorter lifespan usually than sandboxes where you are expected to make your own fun do. Just look at Rust, that game is ancient, and its more popular than ever. I feel that ending support for Ark 1 is a mistake because they seem to be 2 different experiences entirely, and it leaves Wildcard in a vulnerable position, should Ark 2 not be well received. With just how different Ark 2 is looking to be, there are going to be some (maybe a lot even) of players who dont like it and will want to go back to Ark 1, which wont get support anymore. It's so risky. Ultimately, I think what I really want from Wildcard is to redo Ark 1. Better coding, UE5, Better optimization, Bug fixes, a real balance overhaul, fix the flaws in the game design as best they can ect (as much as people don't like Tek, pre Tek Ark had some really big issues too which tek really helped to alleviate). I look at Ark and then at Rust and I wonder why Ark cant be like Rust in that it gets constant updates. I would be willing to accept (hell, even support ) a similar method of monetization (a selection of player made skins being sold in the shop with a revenue split between Wildcard and the creator) to pay for the continued support and perhaps even additional content. I respect the creative vision behind Ark 2 and will give Ark 2 a shot, but, I worry it might be too different from the core identity of Ark as an IP to be received well by a lot of people.

this has been a big problem for a long time. The gap in power between attackers and defenders. Ive been around since day 1 early acess so i have seen the game shift to it's current state over the years, and I can say definitivly that the ease of raiding vs the difficulty of defending is entirely due to WC continuously giving raiders new, better, and more efficient tools to raid people while doing very little at all to help people who are on the defensive. I saw the decisions that caused the meta to shift and force people into rat holes and caves. That specifically is due to 2 major reasons and a few minor ones. First was the introduction of the turret limit. this was a monumental nerf to base defense (granted, people were putting absurd numbers of turrets on their bases, numbering in the thousands. It was too much for the servers to handle, but this begs the question, why did people need so much turret density in the first place? The answer is soakers were and still are ridiculously overpowered.) Keep in mind cryopods hadent come out yet when this first hit, bases were much larger back then for dino storage reasons, and the bigger the base, the more turrets you needed to defend all the blind spots. at this point in time a base could not be adequately defended with 100 heavies. for many tribes there was no other choice but to move into places with 1 way in/out where they could focus all of their defenses at. The second reason was titans. they could evaporate any base they could get at in just a couple of minutes. With their release, it really marked the utter end for those people who still managed to have their base out in the open world. For them it was move or get titan wiped. Compare the way things are today vs how they were in 2015-2016. Sure the game was newer, less game knowledge ect ect, but raiding back before the beaver came out was very expensive due to the scarcity of some resources like polymer, and cementing paste. This may have been the most feature incomplete version of the game but it is also unquestionably the most balanced. expensive to build a base and expensive to defend, but also very expensive to raid. You used to actually incur some risk when commiting to raid someone with sinking all those resources into it. if things went sideways, it wasn't like you could snap your fingers and poof you got 100 stacks of c4/rockets. No, it was a real loss. WC let this problem fester for a long time, and though you could argue it is possible to successfully defend a base, I still stand by my opinion that it is extremely unbalanced. If attacking vs defending were balanced then you wouldent have people stuffing themselves into every hole or cave they can find.