Pipinghot

As far as I know this isn't something Wildcard has ever discussed or even hinted at. When you say "in-game criteria" do you mean lore/story criteria? The main (and only that I'm aware of) criteria is that you ascend to the next story-map (which is to say, the next paid DLC map in the original ASE series). Even though WC published 3rd party fan-made maps as free DLC in between the paid-DLC maps, they never referenced the free maps in the story, lore, or ascension videos, so all of their references are limited to their own maps, the paid maps that were created by WC employees. But in terms of story, to the best of my knowledge there are not any forward-looking elements in the story telling, nothing that foreshadows the map you're going to be send to when you ascend (other than the ascension video itself). It's all retro-active story telling once you reach the new map, with the lore justifying in hindsight why you're now "here" at the new location.

My personal opinion is that this is what they want, to be delisted and take the company private. This could involve an additional layer of shenanigans with some form of bankruptcy (which could very well let them shrug off current debt load) or it might be as simple as getting delisted and then using private equity to pay off their current debts. Mind you, I don't know exactly who constitutes "they" at this point, not sure what stake the 4 founders of WC still have in WC/Snail. For starters there's Shi Hai (and his wife) who effectively own all of Snail China (I think), all of Snail USA and something like 97% of all WC shares. At this point, Shi has a long history of making money for himself even on failing games/ventures. For example, look at how much money the parent game Snail (China) has made on games that they never finished and ultimately shut down, Snail has a solid history of abandoning games & players. Even the electric car company that failed doesn't tell us anything about his personal net worth. The visible fortune of the companies he owns, or has owned, are not a good metric to measure his own personal fortune. Like with most people who play the "I'm a rich person game" at his level, his personal finances are completely opaque. Beyond Shi, there are the four founders of WC. I've never seen any good reporting on their personal net worth's, whether their own fortunes have risen & fallen with WC or whether they're all made good money in spite of WC's business failings. This is, after all, a game that made at least $2B during the good times, if those 4 people were at all smart they took home a bunch of money that they moved into other investments. So, whoever "they" might be at this point in time, there's no evidence to believe that getting delisted will hurt any of them financially, and there are good reasons to believe that they are tanking the stock in order to privatize the company (because any money that they could have made by the company being public they already made some time ago). Getting delisted isn't the end of a company (unfortunately), quite often it's the very thing that gives the founders/owners an opportunity to open up other avenues of reaping profits from the company. After all, it's so much easier to be shady and underhanded when you don't have to deal with the fiduciary and reporting requirements of being a public company. For all we know, ASA was nothing more than a dog & pony show, designed to present the appearance that they were trying hard to save the company when in reality they knew that they were moving towards privatization all along. I know that sounds like a conspiracy theory (and it might very well be, I would be more than happy to be wrong about this) but owners of companies do these sorts of things all the time (especially nowadays, when so much of the business world is rushing headlong away from public companies and towards private equity ownership). I could be wrong, maybe they really are going down the drain honestly and some other company will buy the properties (and if that happens there's a good chance it will be by some other unsavory company like Tencent or Ubisoft that won't really improve the game). But hey, maybe ARK etc. could get bought by a better company... I just wouldn't bet my marble collection on that outcome. They have plenty of options. Even if their failures are 100% honest that doesn't mean they'll lose control of WC nor lose control of ARK, etc. I would like to see that happen, I'm thinking that even Tencent would be better than Snail, but it would be surprising if any that actually happened.

You can, but do you actually do it? There's a reason Joe's asking this question. When you say you get wyvern's milk "very often", when was the last time you were there, as it a day ago, 5 days ago, 12 days ago? He's trying to figure out whether you accidentally waited too long and the decay timer removed it, it's a legit question. This happens to people all the time - someone logs in every day but they forget to go refresh the decay timers on their taming trap or secondary base, maybe they go there once every 5 days but they skipped a visit and didn't realize it. Even if you log in every day that trap might have despawned from the decay timer if you didn't visit it recently enough. So, when was the last time you visited that location before it despawned?

There's no doubt that WildCard wants it to be permanent, they're hoping that having a bunch of garbage interesting activities for players to do will keep players interested in the game/garbage festival. They're hoping that ARK = Fortnite will become a successful money making scheme.

It was still a cash grab, which wouldn't be okay even if WC did a good job (which anyone who's being honest with themselves knew wouldn't happen). You've been in this game since at least 2021 (maybe longer, but that's when your forum account started), so you should have long since known better than to defend them in the first place. Again, no one should defend "cash grab bs" in any game, ever. Anyone who does has only themselves to blame for the game they end up with.

Why did you before? No one should ever defend cash grab bs, anyone who has ever defended cash grabs has only themselves to blame.

Nothing can be done about it unless you can get your country to pass better consumer protection laws for video games. It's a lovely thought but good luck with that. Until or unless that happens, you only choice is to vote with your dollars. If you don't like a game company then don't buy their products. Unless you're good at getting legislation passed that's your only option.

Weeks? Try 8 years. Mind you, I feel your pain, ARK is a bug-ridden mess, but there's nothing new about that. If people choose to keep paying for a game of this (low) quality, from a company that has lied in many different ways, this is how the game will be managed. Again, I feel you, but they're not going to become a better company.

And you can transfer lots more stuff via the upload, what you can carry on you is only part of the picture. Right back at ya', bad suggestion is bad. No matter how they balance the game, even if it was perfect, it would still be harder for new tribes. PvP in ARK is brutal and destructive, which is how it's intended to be. Your version of balance is not the dev's version of balance. Unless you have something useful to suggest don't bother.

That's not what uploads are for. People have figured out that they can use upload to save stuff, and the devs allow it, but the point of uploads is for server transfers. It's never been intended to be a form of safe storage.

"It's already a problem, so WC please make the problem worse," that makes no sense. Anything that makes it harder for griefers is better. Maybe not perfect, but it's still better than saying, "Hey griefers, it's open season have fun." It's more convenient but it's not "essential". Making things harder for griefers is worth the price of making taming a little bit harder.

Yes. All of these threads you've been in have been about honesty and integrity, which you are making clear you've never understood. Every one of these threads has been caused by WC saying one thing and doing another, talking out of both sides of their mouth, making false promises about what their players can expect. Nearly every conversation for every game that discusses P2W issues is about honesty and integrity, because nearly every company that adds P2W features to their game lies about them. Otherwise known as <drumroll> dishonesty. And the core issue is promising players a level playing field but then adding P2W features that were never disclosed until after people had bought the game. You know, the stuff that you keep failing to understand. You really need to look in a mirror once in a while, your level of failed self-awareness is astounding. I would suggest you take your own advice, but it's clear you're either not willing or not able to follow along. Failed red herring #149. That's been explained in multiple threads. You're either willfully ignorant or incapable of learning how people lose when P2W content is added to a game, or even when a company misleads them about non-P2W content. It seems like you should understand by now that there is a difference between being honest and being dishonest, but apparently these are concepts that bamboozle you. Honest capitalism and dishonest capitalism are not the same thing. Honest selling of products and dishonest selling of products are not the same thing. Fully disclosing information to customers and deliberately concealing and obfuscating information from customers are not the same thing. Truth and lies are not the game thing, and yet here you are many posts later still incapable of telling the difference. These are not difficult concepts, and yet you've never been able to grasp them, which is why you're back here yet again, failing to understand the discussion and arguing about the wrong things. Yup, you definitely need some mirrors in your house. Failed red herring #150. Congrats, achievement unlocked.

Never said it is, you can stop your straw man arguments any time. But you won't, because that's how you roll. Nope. Wrong again. Never said they were. More of your usual straw man arguments. Nope. Wrong again.

Still completely wrong in your understanding of the discussion. This isn't about capitalism, and never has been, it's about honesty and integrity. You continue to fail to understand the discussion and argue about the wrong topic. Swing and a miss. Just one more thing you're wrong about.

A lie of omission is still a lie, no matter how many times you try to deny it this basic, fundamental fact will still be true. WC deliberately mislead people and implied things they knew were false right from the beginning, that's lying.

That same argument is used in every P2W game, and it's always a failed argument because it severely misses the real point. Start with two players of equal skill. Give the first player the P2W cat and the second player a lesser creature. The player will the P2W cat will win more often because they have paid money to artificially boost their effectiveness, that's P2W. That same scenario plays out whether they're both bad players, both medium players or both excellent players. Any feature/component/element/creature that allows a player to spend money to artificially boost their effectiveness is a P2W feature. The skill level of the player who purchases the P2W feature is a meaningless red herring. That's what P2W players get for trusting WC. Still a meaningless argument. P2W does not require that the stakes have to be higher than simply bragging rights. Paying for an advantage is paying for an advantage, regardless of the stakes. And, as you're already agreed, there's some truth to that. The difference was that the paid DLC in ASE was mostly new content, with a couple of P2W elements. They were still P2W, which mattered to every single PvP player in the game, but there were not as much P2W as the ASA DLC and the ASE DLC included a much larger amount of legitimate new content. Again, there is both a quantitative and qualitative difference. Then it's odd that you already supported the idea that the ASE DLC's included P2W features.

P2W doesn't mean automatic victory, it means paying for an explicit advantage. The problem is that "paying for an explicit advantage" is something people don't want to say and type over-and-over again, so pretty much the whole world used "P2W" as a shorthand for this idea. It may not be 'invincible", but it's definitely overpowered, and that power is purchased for money, that's what P2W means.

Yes, of course there is, and if you don't understand that without it having to be explained then you're exactly the kind of sucker customer that WildCard is looking for. Well done, you just demonstrated how the marketing lie functioned. When WC made a big deal out of saying that the maps in ASE would all be free they were deliberately implying that there would be no additional cost beyond buying ASE, and they knew that wasn't true. That deliberate avoidance of disclosing their plans to make more paid DLC was a lie of omission, and a lie of omission is still a lie. If you say to someone, "I'm not going to punch you," and then you kick them, then the statement was technically "true" while still being a deliberate lie of omission. No matter how you try to rationalize things, that's still a lie. And likewise no matter how you try to rationalize paid DLC in ASA that's still a Marketing Lie of Omission. There were people who explicitly asked WC if they were going to sell other paid DLC during ASA and WC dodged the question, they knew they were using a marketing lie of omission to mask their true intentions. WC knew they were being dishonest, the shame of it all is that more players didn't realize this was happening and withhold their money. If you can use it on said map then it is, by definition, not unrelated, you've just proven that it's quite related. It's even more related if it's explicitly designed to specifically give an advantage on said map, which it is. Your analogy falls flat, it's missing a crucial element. The crucial element is full disclosure in advance. If you give a way a free coke that's flat, lacking carbonation, but you don't disclose that in advance, and then you offer to sell people a "cup upgrade" that also adds carbonation to the drink, that's deliberately dishonest. Your lie of omission is the very thing that makes your free coke a ripoff. This is what WC did, they didn't merely offer to sell a better cup, they're deliberately selling a cup that adds something to the drink itself, a component that they deliberately left out when they gave away the uncarbonated drink. Accusing people of "crying" is the mark of someone who doesn't want to have an honest conversation. Winning is winning, regardless of whether there's an esport league or cash prizes, you're creating a false distinction that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Selling features that give people an in-game advantage is P2W regardless of what the stakes are, even if the only stakes are bragging rights. But the stakes in ARK are much more than bragging rights, P2W in ARK can make a significant difference in the amount time people spend reaching their goals in-game, and that time has value. That's especially true in PvP, where the value of that time can mean the difference between winning or many, many hours of work destroyed in a defeat. But even in PvE it's still true, being able to spend money in order to accomplish goals (farming, caving, beating the bosses, etc.) more quickly means that in the context of PvE selling a P2W items means WC is selling people the time from their own lives at a premium. Even in game with no esports, cash prizes, etc., time still has value. If people like you are willing to buy P2W features that's your choice, but in no way does that negate or invalidate the right of others to criticize P2W features. P2W doesn't magically disappear if there are no prizes, it's still paying money for an explicit advantage. You've offered some great arguments for why people shouldn't buy P2W features, again well done. I agree with you that these things are going to get nerfed (see, we can agree on something) but that means you're partially making my argument for me. What you have demonstrated is that even people who are willing to buy P2W features shouldn't trust WC, they're just going to get ripped off and disappointed in the end. Having said that, this truth does not negate, in any way, the fact that the Train Robbery DLC and the P2W cat are still P2W features, and in no way does that negate people's right to complain about P2W features.

Here's a funny thing, yes, I really do. Turns out you know nothing about my professional experience nor anything about what I know, big surprise. You, on the other hand, come off as a mindless fanboi who's happy to pay for scummy P2W features. There is both a qualitative and quantitative difference between the power-creep that was built in to paid map/DLC's released during ASE vs. the Train Robbery and P2W cat being released in ASA. The ASE DLC included bona fide content, new maps to explore, new adventures, caves, missions, bosses, etc. with the P2W elements of adding more powerful new dinos being only a small component of hte DLC. The ASE DLC, on the other hand, have been mostly explicitly P2W features that offer very little new content that's meaningful for game play other than the fact of being P2W features. AT least half of the Train Robbery DLC was nothing more than P2W objects, and a train isn't remotely comparable to a new map. That's both quantitatively and qualitatively inferior to Scorched Earth being paid DLC during ASE.

There is a difference between power creep in a game and just selling individual P2W features outright. Even though the paid expansions in ASE included some P2W features (power creep from new, better creatures) that's not the same as selling an individual P2W creature for a separate fee. It's also not the same as promising the customers that all of the maps in ASA will be free and then creating a separate P2W Train Robbery DLC. A marketing lie is still a lie. WC promised players that the expansions would be free, but they are sneakily violating that promise by selling P2W DLC along the way rather than simply being honest and admitting there were going to charge more money as new content got released. A lying scumbag is still a lying scumbag no matter what sneaky rationalizations they use to violate their word.

Everyone understands how businesses work. P2W garbage in any game is still scumbaggery, no matter what trash arguments you try to use.

P2W is scummy no matter how you try to make it sound good. If you like game companies ripping you off then that's your business, but that doesn't mean anyone else is obligated to be sucked in by these terrible arguments. Releasing paid DLC's is reasonable business. Releasing P2W DLC's like the Train Robbery DLC and P2W animals is nothing more than scumbaggery.

P2W is scummy no matter how you try to make it sound good. If you like game companies ripping you off then that's your business, but that doesn't mean anyone else is obligated to be sucked in by these terrible arguments. Releasing paid DLC's is reasonable business. Releasing P2W DLC's like the Train Robbery DLC and P2W animals is nothing more than scumbaggery.

Everything they've done since the moment they announced that porting the game from UE4 to UE5 would cost money has been scammy. This is the future of ARK, P2W DLC's, P2W creatures, nickel & dime'ing players to death. The only way to avoid getting abused is to walk away from the game, they're never going to stop.

This game doesn't have a simple progression - Do A, then do B, then do C. For the most part it's a "build your own adventure" game where you explore/build/tame whatever you want to, as much as you want to. Having said that, the early maps end with some caves to beat, where you collect artifacts that you use to spawn the boss fights for each map. If you want some general guidelines, look for the caves on your map (or look them up) and see what you will need to explore them. Then look up what you will need for boss fights. This information will help you decide what to do next, or you might even decide that you don't want to go to the trouble of doing boss fights. But even if you don't care about boss fights the caves can be fun and interesting, and learning more about them might help you decide what to do next.